Kabbalah

Rating:
Summary: encyclopedic
Review: I have learned a great deal from KABALLAH. It is a cross-section of the research of Herr Doktor Gershom Scholem. Each topic is given a concise explanation, including personalities and bibliographic references. When I first read this book, I found the explanations a bit terse. The density of information was overwhelming. Now, that I am more familiar with the work of Professor Scholem, I find this text to be an excellent review. If you are interested in the research of Professor Scholem or in the Kabbalah's historical development, this will be interesting to you.

Rating:
Summary: encyclopedic
Review: I have learned a great deal from KABALLAH. It is a cross-section of the research of Herr Doktor Gershom Scholem. Each topic is given a concise explanation, including personalities and bibliographic references. When I first read this book, I found the explanations a bit terse. The density of information was overwhelming. Now, that I am more familiar with the work of Professor Scholem, I find this text to be an excellent review. If you are interested in the research of Professor Scholem or in the Kabbalah's historical development, this will be interesting to you.

Rating:
Summary: Kaballah by Gershom Scholem
Review: The book Kaballah by Gershom Scholem is certainly an extensive, and complete (to my knowledge) examination of the kaballah, however, it contains some major drawbacks that prevent it from recieving my full recommendation.

As a high school junior doing an independent study on religion, I chose this book from the recommendations that said that it was a good overview, a good book for a beginner. I found, however, that this praise was highly misleading.

The book is divided into sections: history, basic ideas, topics, and personalities. Each of these sections are subdivided into chapters, each a few pages long.

Many of these chapters are interesting, but they lack full explaination of the ideas included. Often, there was just a list of facts and opposing viewpoints, and when i found a sentence that was interesting, Scholem would immediately move on to another source, another name, another viewpoint. Pages would go by before the point of the chapter could be discerned, and even then, was often revealed only vaguely. The hebrew transliterations were also difficult to navigate, for after the english translation was given once, it was as though the reader was simply expected to know it. The chapters often consisted of page after page of other books to look at, other authors to read.

As a general overview for a beginner, Kaballah certainly does not qualify. I later learned that the book was written as an encyclopedia, a reference book for scholars. For someone who already had a knowledge of the Kaballah and its ideas, as well as a knowledge of hebrew, Kaballah is most likely a much more interesting and useful book to own. As for someone beginning their studies into this esoteric and mysterious branch of judaism, a more simple, fact based book would serve a much more useful purpose.

Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedic Survey of Kabbalah
Review: The great historian/scholar of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, wrote a huge entry on Kabbalah to be used in an encyclopedia of Judaism. This was later published in book form--this is that book. It is NOT a good first-timer, entry-level book on Kabbalah. It IS a wonderful reference work on the subject--probably the best in existence. It's entries are voluminous, even exhaustive. He includes short biographies of major Kabbalists as well as chapters on the main concepts of Kabbalah, origins, etc. etc. etc. Kabbalah, by its very nature, is not a unified study or set of beliefs, but the thinking of many, varied mystics over centuries. Many of the ideas evolved, and like virtually all of Judaism, includes disagreements, antithetical arguments, and historical developments (see the Talmud or even, to a smaller extent, the Zohar). As Scholem stated elsewhere in reference to the Kabbalists, "Like all mystics, they were at once conservatives and radicals" in "The Messianic Idea in Judaism" Schocken Books NY 1971 page 48. Furthermore, as he stated in "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" (Schocken Books NY 1972) on page 229, "The study of mysticism is similar to the attempt to imagine the content of a shell whose core has never been seen by the scholar" quoted by Moshe Idel in "Kabbalah: New Perspectives" (Yale University Press New Haven, CT 1988) on page 37. Thus, while this book is a work of art (or at least of scholarship), is not a practitioner's manual. However, practicing Kabbalists would do well to absorb the important concepts, background, and context provided so well in this and other Scholem works. As Knowledge Management teaches us, you don't have knowledge without context, and knowledge is actionable, information is not.


Rating:
Summary: A Major Book in Kabbalah Studies
Review: This book is an essential component of any would-be library of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, or Jewish history.

The topic of Kabbalah studies has recently been overloaded by a spate of publications that vary in scholarship and accessibility from the arcane to the truly pathetic. Scholem's book, while slightly older, is definitely a cure for all of the smarmy new-age occultism that threatens to turn the study of the Kabbalah into a subject on par with palm reading or UFO abductions.

Scholem is a first-class scholar, and what he provides here is a thorough history of ideas that surround the Kabbalah. He treats the subject with all of the respect that the best religious scholars would give to a subject, and he's extremely well-versed in the materials upon which he comments. He guides the reader through the history, development, and transition of the Kabbalah through European intellectual history, and through the changes in the Jewish tradition. For that reason, it's as much an interesting story of the history of Judaic thought as it is an investigation into 'mysticism'.

Scholem is consistenly clear in his terminology, precise in his historical references, and honest in his accounts. He provides excellent bibliographies to help the read get at some of the essential issues and personages.

This isn't a 'how-to' book on Kabbalist 'magick' as so frequently appears on the shelves of esoteric bookshops. This is a critical work that is written in strict academic style, yet is highly readable, challenging, and very thorough. It's the sort of book that, if you read it, you'll know more about the topic than %99 of the people out there currently babbling about it. It does a genuine service to affirm the proper importance of Jewish theology and Jewish spiritual traditions in the world of scholarship. And, to be honest, I'd highly recommend it students of religious studies, to the current crop of occultists who're looking for the genuine article when it comes to the Kabbalah, and for those who're keen on studying theological enquiry.

Especially nice, I thought, are the glossary at the back and the second section of the book, which is a collection of 'topics' which are read much like large encyclopedia articles. One can look up 'evil' and see the theodicy of the Kabbalah; or you can find 'Torah' and see a discussion of Kabbalistic midrash (commentary).

I've read lots of rubbish with the word 'Kabbalah' on the cover. This book made me forget about all of that.

Read it - and get the heart and root of a glorious endeavour of human communication with God.

Rating:
Summary: Best overall view of Kabbalah
Review: This is really a great reference work on Kabbalah. You should read it through from cover to cover once, and then refer back to it from time to time while reading other books on Kabbalah as needed. I don't think there is another book which covers every period and teacher of Kabbalah from every period, even to the pre-medieval roots of Kabbalah in Old Testament times, as well as it's influences such as gnosticism and neoplatonism. How one relates to the other, etc. it's all in here. As other reviewers have noted, this is not a "how to" book, but a book for serious students of Kabbalah which you will always need to find other texts for studying Kabbalah.