Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah (English)

God, Universe, and Man-their essential unity and fundamental attributes as seen through the eyes of Jewish esoteric tradition-is the subject of Leo Schaya's masterly study of the Kabbalah. Unlike most works on the subject, which focus on the history of the Kabbalah or the Kabbalah as literature (not to mention countless "new age" rants), this penetrating text expounds the universal teachings of the Kabbalah on the relationships of all things to their supreme archetypes, the ten Sefiroth, or principial aspects of God. In addition to the Old Testament and the Talmud, Schaya draws on one of the classical sources of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar or Book of Splendor, from which he extracts an all-embracing synthesis of the numberless degrees of All-Reality, to which correspond the multiple states of the human being, from earthly individuality to essential identity with the Absolute. This work, acclaimed by reviewers and scholars alike, fittingly concludes with an illuminating chapter on the Name of God, which saves "all those who invoke him in truth."