Perle Epstein presents a fairly complete picture of
Jewish mysticism in Kabbalah: The Way of
the Jewish Mystic.
She moves about from Abraham Abulafia’s system of
breathing and visualization, to the Merkavah mystics of the first century, to
the German Chassidim, or Pietists, who fasted and rolled naked in the snow. She
is especially enamored of the Safed group of mystics who surrounded the Holy
Ari in the fifteenth century, seeing it as a high water mark of Jewish
mysticism never to be repeated.
Espstein is especially harsh on modern
Hasidism. She has good things to say
about the early years of the movement, but not much else for the last
two-hundred years. The
book ends on this sour note. Written in 1978, she despairs
of how little Kabbalistic material there is for modern Jews to consume. Of course, this has changed dramatically in
the last 30 years. She laments the paucity of materials, centers, movements in 1978;
now she may not like the crass commercialization of Jewish mysticism. It is hard to say.
Perhaps Judaism needs as much mysticism as it can
muster.
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