This book analyzes and describes the development and aspects of imagery techniques, a primary mode of mystical experience, in twentieth century Jewish mysticism. These techniques, in contrast to linguistic techniques in medieval Kabbalah and in contrast to early Hasidism, have all the characteristics of a full screenplay, a long and complicated plot woven together from many scenes, a kind of a feature film. Research on this development and nature of the imagery experience is carried out through comparison to similar developments in philosophy and psychology and is fruitfully contextualized within broader trends of western and eastern mysticism.

"In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observationsand modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self"--

Chapter 1: The modern concept of mysticism -- Chapter 2: Jewish mysticism and national theology -- Chapter 3: The new age of Kabbalah research -- Chapter 4: "Authorized guardians": the rejection of occult and contemporary Kabbalah -- Chapter 5: The mystification of Kabbalah: Abraham Abulafia in contemporary Kabbalah.

Jonathan Garb's A History of Kabbalah: From the Early Modern Period to the Present Day is a lucid and sophisticated account of the multifaceted nature of Jewish mysticism, focusing on its development from the spiritual revolution that took place in Safed in the sixteenth century until the present. Opening the secrets of the kabbalah to a wider audience, Garb judiciously argued that how important the mystical and esoteric tradition has been in Jewish history and in the cultural and intellectual life of Europe more generally. One of the more methodologically innovative aspects of Garb's book is his contention that kabbalah became a major factor in the religious life of Jews in the modern age due to print and others forms of rapid communication, a process that has magnified significantly in recent years due to the digital revolution. Informative and provocative, A History of Kabbalah will surely be of interest to a wide readership.

Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889–1943) was a remarkable Hasidic mystic, leader, and educator. He confronted the secularization and dislocation of Polish Jews after World War I, the failure of the traditional educational system, and the devastation of the Holocaust, in which he lost all his close family and eventually his own life. Thanks to a new critical edition of his Warsaw Ghetto sermons, scholars have begun to reassess the relationship between Shapira's literary and educational attainments, his prewar mysticism, and his Holocaust experience, and to reexamine the question of faith—or its collapse—in the Warsaw Ghetto. This interdisciplinary volume, the first such work devoted to a twentieth-century Hasidic leader, integrates social and intellectual history along with theological, literary, and anthropological analyses of Shapira's legacy. It raises theoretical and methodological questions related to the study of Jewish thought and mysticism, but also contributes to contemporary conversations about topics such as spiritual renewal and radical religious experience, the literature of suffering, and perhaps most pressingly, the question of faith and meaning—or their rupture—in the wake of genocide.

Dr. Edward Hoffman, world-renowned thinker and writer in humanistic psychology, reveals how the Kabbalah exerted a profound influence on the establishment and growth of Western psychological thought. With a new introduction and updated bibliography, The Way of Splendor: The 25th Anniversary begins with an historical presentation of Kabalistic metaphysics and cosmology, then discusses the psychological dimensions of Kabbalah on such topics as dreams, meditation, sexuality, community, health and emotions.

This volume offers an examination of varied forms of expressions of heresy in Jewish history, thought and literature. Contributions explore the formative role of the figure of the heretic and of heretic thought in the development of the Jewish traditions from antiquity to the 20th century. Chapters explore the role of heresy in the Hellenic period and Rabbinic literature; the significance of heresy to Kabbalah, and the critical and often formative importance the challenge of heresy plays for modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Freud, and Derrida, and literary figures such as Kafka, Tchernikhovsky, and I.B. Singer. Examining heresy as a boundary issue constitutive for the formation of Jewish tradition, this book contributes to a better understanding of the significance of the figure of the heretic for tradition more generally.