God at the Center: Meditations on Jewish Spirituality

David R. Blumenthal is a professor of Judaic studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is one of several esteemed scholars who contend that Moses Maimonides was not a pure rationalistic philosopher but a mystic, or, more precisely, a philosophic mystic. His view is that a person needs to first understand subjects philosophically and then they can move on to a post-philosophic, post-intellectual, post-cognitive religious experience. In other words, a human's ultimate goal is not understanding, as many maintain Maimonides taught, but a religious experience. People need to aim for this religious experience, and not stop when they think that they have an understanding of the universe and its laws.

This is a top notch book. It is written following the weekly Torah portion, read each week in the synagogue. Essentially it is Dr. Blumenthal's supra commentary on parts of Rabbi Levi of Berditchev's Kedushat Levi. It's a book of Torah teaching and learning, not a staid academic reasearch book on Chassidim. The author is from the old line of conservative Rabbi's who lead the creation of Judaic Studies in America along the line's and learning of Abraham Joshua Heschel. It's a level of scholarship and feeling for Judaism that is too missing by most non Orthodox teachers today.