Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan lived a relatively short life,
and when he died, he left a variety of books relating to Jewish mysticism that
where and have remained immensely influential in bringing Jewish meditative
practice to a wide audience.
In his Meditation
and The Bible Kaplan performs the time honored method of getting at the “true”
meaning of certain biblical passages and word definitions by subtly shifting
their meanings. He uses traditional
religious sources to recover the etymology of certain words which, under the
influence of new definitions, have connotations with meditation.
His results are not historical in the strict sense,
but the kind of sacred fiction Jews have always performed with their holy
books. A twist here, and a turn there,
and new meanings can be wrung from old texts.
And at the end, a new set of definitions are produced
dressed in old garb.
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