Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Your Word is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer







Your Word is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer, edited and translated by Arthur Green and Barry W. Holtz, present short passages from Hasidic masters and their books.   

The main thrust of this slim volume is for use: this is not an academic book, but to be employed during moments of prayer of mediation.  As the authors explain in the introduction:

“The mystical ecstasy of the Hasidism flow from the rediscovery that God is present in all of human life.  All things and all moments are vessels that contain his presence.”

This book fits nicely with Rabbi Arthur Green’s long career of taking Hasidic elements of worship, and fitting them into contemporary Jewish needs.  For Green, this concerns God’s radical immanence in the world.  

The passages in this book are a compendium of such expressions of God, and are meant to facilitate such a view.

No comments:

Post a Comment