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A Way through the World
Michael Fagenblat

Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow
by Arthur Green
Jewish lights
192pp
$21.95
Arthur Green takes some of the mystique out of kabbalah, by re-envisioning it as a guide for day-to-day life

If the new age has succeeded in taking kabbalah out of its traditional esoteric hideout, it has for all that placed a formidable obstacle between Jewish mysticism and most people with a serious interest in Jewish teachings. Simplification, commodification and plain old abuse of kabbalah have led to public skepticism and cynicism, adding up at the twilight of the New Age to as much misunderstanding of kabbalah as at its dawn.

It is therefore of particular importance that Arthur Green has written a new book that should eclipse much of the popular literature on kabbalah. Green uniquely combines genuine mastery of the subject matter with great common sense, lucidity and, of special significance, a serious commitment to the practical value of Jewish mysticism in modern life.

Green joins the expertise of a professor (he teaches Jewish thought at Brandeis University) with the concern of a rabbi (ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, he is former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and has recently accepted an offer to become dean of a new, non-denominational rabbinic seminary to be run out of Boston�s Hebrew College, beginning next year). The result is a master teacher of modern Jewish mysticism who leaves both fads and fundamentalisms behind. In this, he presents the kabbalistic and hasidic tradition as a coherent, live option with compelling mystical insight, without representing it as a sacred cow untouched by history or bearing absolutist claims to truth. "All the grand systems of metaphysical truth taught by prior ages collapsed for good reason. In turning back to the sources of Kabbalah, we seek inspiration and wisdom for what is essentially a Jewish mysticism for a post-kabbalistic age. We seek to be richly nurtured by the past, but not to return to it or to restore its unquestioned authority."

Even so, would-be intellectuals might still squirm as Green opens his book with questions that most scholars would dare not ask: "What does the kabbalistic tradition have to teach today�s seeker?"; "How might the Kabbalah be re-fitted so that it can serve as an appropriate vehicle for a very contemporary quest?" But the New Age lingo in no way mitigates what is, from beginning to end, an entirely serious attempt to sustain relevance and authenticity.

Green presents kabbalah as a "this-worldly" Jewish mysticism that remains grounded in life as it is lived by most of us most of the time -- as a series of diverse events whose elusive unity might be assumed and desired but is rarely grasped. For Green, such unity is the mystics� declaration of faith that "nothing but God exists" and that "the knower, the knowledge, and the known are entirely one, inseparable from one another."

But Green follows the kabbalists in showing how this abstract declaration of unity is made concrete in everyday religious life, for the divine oneness is present in manifold and distinct ways that are called Sefirot, or sometimes Worlds, or Names of God. It is through these distinct expressions of God that we get to know the particularities of the Infinite. Prayer, for example, becomes a way of addressing and acknowledging the different expressions of God�s being, now abundantly graceful (as hesed, the first part of the Amidah prayer, said three times daily), now stern and final (as din, the next of the Amidah blessings). It is therefore never a matter, neither for Green nor for the kabbalists who precede him, of merely "feeling" that All is One, but of seeking out the One in its various degrees of intimacy. Sometimes, for example, the ego is strong and willful, and then God�s oneness is donned with the name King; at other times, one is needy and fragile, at which point God comes as Father or Mother. At still other times, the self overcomes its fear and its need for parental love, at which point God wears the name Lover, responding to one�s longing for union.

Kabbalah turns out to be a way of living everyday life, a life of work and rest, of family and enemies, within an experience of trust and a commitment to the divinity of creation. Meditation and festivals, community and the environment, the study of Torah and the doing of a commandment all reflect the internal dynamics of the oneness of God. Jewish mysticism is thus opposed to all forms of escapism, for at its basis is an affirmation that the world as it is, even if it is not the first or final truth, is fundamentally valuable, indeed is a part of God, and that it is we who determine the further course of God in the world.

Combining a belief in unity with a recognition of difference makes this mysticism both inspiring and levelheaded. "The way through the world / Is more difficult to find than the way beyond it," wrote Wallace Stevens, which expresses well Green�s forging of a mysticism that remains grounded in common, worldly experiences. It is a commitment to the elusive immanence of God; it accepts the fundamental unity and divinity of life and at the same time works toward it. And yet the kabbalists� claim that Torah and Jewish worship unite God has led many of them to view other ways as unnecessary, erroneous and sinful. This leads to reprehensible moral stances such as claims to Jewish "superiority" or to the "uniqueness" of the Jewish soul, claims that can have grievous political implications.

HOW, THEN, CAN A JEWISH mysticism for our time not embroil itself in xenophobia or other time-honored chauvinisms? In the face of such questions, Green displays, alongside his perpetual seeking and his love of Torah and the Jewish people, "critical thought in areas where reason and realism are truly needed, especially in politics and relations between Jews and other ethnic or religious communities."

Today�s Jews abide in a different political and moral climate from kabbalists of former ages, and so Green urges us "to adapt and transform their vision for the unique times in which we live." This does not, Green is keen to emphasize, imply doing away with the Jewish and mystical sense of commandedness, or with reverence for the kabbalists, in whose line a contemporary Jewish mystic stands. In fact, one can even read in Green�s book a certain critique of the isolated American individual, that ideological archetype behind many a seeker�s quest, in favor of belonging to tradition and community. Here, however, belonging is a way of being open to others and is not in the least parochial, though it also means committing oneself, in one way or another, to Jewish life, practices and learning.

The success of this book can be seen in light of Gershom Scholem�s unpromising estimation of "the possibility of Jewish mysticism in our time." Reflecting in 1963, the great founder of the scholarly discipline of kabbalah surmised that for those of us who do not "share the faith of our forebears" and have lost "the concept of Torah from heaven," there could be no public expression of Jewish mysticism. What remains is "Jewish religious anarchy," in which mystical experience is restricted to the individual and devoid of the organizing frameworks of tradition, community and authority. This was a perspicuous analysis that continues to shed light on the meaning of mystical experience in a persistently secular age.

But not even Scholem could have foreseen the public taste for mystical experience, and it is on this that Green�s book feasts. Beginning not with the idea of "Torah from heaven" but with mystical experience as it is lived by many Jews today, Green attempts to show how a patient reflection on kabbalistic and hasidic sources might allow one to reconstruct the ladder, a ladder that ascends to the depths of the inner self rather than the heights of heaven.

In fact, Green too knows that without Torah, in the demanding sense of the word of God, no Jewish mysticism will live up to its name, let alone flourish. As he tried to do in his other great book, "Seek My Face Speak My Name," Green faces this challenge by thinking through what the idea of revelation might mean today and by encouraging Jews interested in their mystical tradition to study and contemplate it. What all this amounts to is a reading of modern life in light of kabbalistic insights without giving up on anything essential. Think of it as a mystical pragmatism -- combining enormous trust in the Jewish expression of the divine Oneness of being, with an equal measure of common sense and fidelity to modern life.