Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow

This book was extraordinarily helpful. Well written and accessible, the author communicated profound understandings that underlie both conceptual understanding and facilitation of practice. For any reader interested in mystic spirituality and a deeper spiritual path, I strongly recommend this book.

All of the good points about EHYEH have been mentioned by other reviewers. I only want to correct two things said by the reviewer from San Ramon: 1. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is very much alive as of this writing. 2. Arthur Green is not on the right wing of anything.

Rabbi Green, has written this book as a exposition of his personal Jewish mystical theology. The book is intended for the Jewish mystical seeker, who is dissatisfied with traditional normative Judaism. It is a liberal perspective, although to be fair, Green is definately on the right wing of the Jewish Renewal movement. The book lays out the system of sfirot, olamot, and shemot in basic terms, provides some guided meditations, provides a negative critique of Lurianic kabbalah (too complicated to be useful), provides a fairly useful summary of the modern day issues for mysticism and halacha to solve (some would say fads). He is providing a Jewish mystical framework divorced from tradition in order to attract Jews who would otherwise be studying Buddhism or other Eastern religious traditions. The purpose is to address the mystical experience within a post-modern context. He rejects a traditional normative understanding of God and Torah. Instead, he uses mysticism to develop an alternative. The book is definately rooted in the Age of Aquarius. Green was one of the founders of the Havurah movement back in 1968. It attempts to graft modern (post-modern?) counter-culture onto Judaism. Even down to a wise-crack about Republican Jews. The book very much fits with the goals of the Jewish Renewal movement. Although, in his chapter on sources for further study, he is much more respectful of traditional sources than many of the leaders of Jewish Renewal after the passing of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the hassidic Rabbi who founded the movement. Rabbi Green is also the author of the companion introduction to the translation of the Zohar being prepared by Daniel Matt at Stanford University. That introduction is an excellent one to the system of kabbalah in the Zohar.

Arthur Green has a writing style wich feels as though you are having a fireside talk with an older,very wise man (don't know if that's how he is but that's how he comes across).There where several points in this book where I had to put it down because the points he elucidated where so clarifying and enlightening.Awesome book.