"This compelling book pours a clear light onto the concealed reasons why certain events appear in our lives and the world at large. Exploring the ancient principles of Kabbalistic Astrology reveals that each of us is born into an astrological environment best suited for the completion of the corrections that we must make in our lives."--Publisher description.

Yaakov Kronenberg is eminently suitable to write this ground breaking work on Jewish astrology. Yaakov is an accomplished scholar in Rabbinical and kabbalistic texts and studied with many of the kabbalistic masters of the previous generation. Besides that he studied privately for a number of years with an old Jewish Hungarian mystic in New york city ancient and medieval astrology and is an accomplished astrologer in his own right giving him the background and understanding to explore the old Jewish texts.

A fascinating work of the Torah outlook on astrology and the mazalot, examining the power and limits of the Zodiac in classical Jewish sources.

Above the Zodiac: Astrology in Jewish Thought uncovers the profound connection between Jewish mysticism and classic astrology by citing the many references scattered throughout Jewish literature to the influence of the stars on human destiny. Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson gives a month-by-month rendering of Jewish astrology according to kabbalah, summarizing the complex system of elements in Jewish thought that correlates to each astrological sign. The book also explains the unique relationship the Jewish people have to astrology, and under what circumstances astrological consultations are permitted to individuals.

The present volume offers a critical edition of the Hebrew texts, accompanied by English translation and commentary of Reshit Ḥokhmah (Beginning of Wisdom) and Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot (Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs) by Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1089–ca. 1161). The first, the summa and by far the longest of his astrological works, the target of the most cross-references from the rest of that corpus and the most influential, enjoyed the widest circulation among Jews in the Middle Ages and after. The second, by contrast, is the most obscure. It is never referred to elsewhere by its author and is the only work for which Ibn Ezra’s authorship must be substantiated. Reshit Ḥokhmah and Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot were written in order to explain concepts common to the various branches of astrology that Ibn Ezra addressed elsewhere and to elucidate the worldview that underlies astrology. These two treatises are the richest and most varied with regard to the astrological information they present. Reshit Ḥokhmah and Mishpeṭei ha-Mazzalot also exemplify the close collaboration between astronomy and astrology in medieval science and are the two components of Ibn Ezra’s astrological corpus with the most extensive, comprehensive, and significant astronomical content. "A critical edition with English translation of Reshit Ḥokhmah was published in 1998 by Epstein. Sela has not only aspired to improve it but also supplied a commentary to render the text more comprehensible. Sela’s mission is successfully accomplished for both treatises. This multifarious book is another important contribution to a deeper understanding of the life and work of one of the most important medieval Jewish polymaths." - Ilana Wartenberg, Universität Bern, in: Journal for the History of Astronomy 50.1 (2019)