Kabbalah: A Love Story by Lawrence Kushner
By Lawrence Kushner
Reviews
“This one is a gem.” —David Mamet, playwright
“Lawrence Kushner . . . revolutionizes our figuring out of God, and exhibits how we find our precise nature by way of establishing ourselves to love.” —Daniel C. Matt, writer of the fundamental Kabbalah
“Part damn-good storytelling, half mind-bending magic, Kabbalah isn’t quite a unique; it’s an event of Jewish mysticism—seductive, cerebral, and funny, advised in a unconditionally distinct and lovely voice.” —Debbie Danielpour Chapel
“Like all inventive non secular thinkers, Rabbi Kushner . . . blends humor, suspense, and the elegant in a modern amalgam of magical realism and the conventional non secular fable.” —Bernard Horn, writer of dealing with the Fires: Conversations with A.B. Yehoshua
Info
Sometime, someplace, a person is trying to find solutions . . .
. . . in a thirteenth-century castle
. . . on a educate to a focus camp
. . . in a brand new York urban apartment
Hidden in the binding of an historical textual content that has been handed down throughout the a while lies the reply to at least one of the heart’s everlasting questions. while the textual content falls into the arms of Rabbi Kalman Stern, he has no concept that his lonely lifetime of highbrow goals is ready to alter as soon as he opens the ebook. quickly later on, he meets astronomer Isabel Benveniste, a girl of technology who stirs his soul as no girl has for a few years. yet Kalman has a lot to profit sooner than he can free up his center and allow real love into his lifestyles. the most important lies within the mysterious record he reveals contained in the Zohar, the grasp textual content of the Kabbalah.
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Extra resources for Kabbalah: A Love Story
Sample text
From spectral analysis—that is, from examining the different colors of starlight—we are able to deduce that the stars are different distances away. Many of the brightest stars are actually galaxies, containing millions of stars. ” asked Kalman. “Remember when we talked about Einstein’s theory of the big bang, Kal? ’ Not just matter and energy, but space and time, too. If you could beat the speed of light and get your rocket ship all the way to the event horizon, you wouldn’t see a sphere the size of the expanding universe.
You are the darkness; I am the spark. Botzina d’qardinuta and alma d’ah-tay. Moshe ben Shem Tov d’Vadi al-Hajra. Kalman was suddenly aware of the pounding of his heart. “Letter. Letter. My God, in my hands . . right, it’s a letter . . here. It’s a love . . goddamn letter, some kind of love letter. No, no, it’s theology . . some kind of Kabbalah . . maybe. ” He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. ” To any student of the Zohar, these two phrases are shorthand for one of the Zohar’s great insights into the ultimate nature of creation.
There is no secret,” he would protest. But it was no use. They would only smile demurely and fan themselves. The more forward might even accidentally brush the back of his hand. Or was it a caress? Everyone always thinking you are up to mischief—it can do strange things to a man’s way of looking at the world. In Moshe’s case, it had two not unpredictable results: He became kabbalah 37 • passionately, even fanatically, righteous; and he became convinced that other people were concealing something from him.