Discovering Jewish Meditation

A supportive and wise guide that is an absolute must for anyone who wants to learn Jewish meditation or improve their practice. Nan Fink Gefen teaches you how to meditate on your own, and starts you on the path to a deeper connection with the Divine and to greater insight about your own life. Whatever your level of understanding, she gives you the tools and support you need to discover the transformative power of meditation.

This most comprehensive introduction to a time-honored spiritual practice:

• Answers commonly asked questions about the nature and history of Jewish meditation, and examines how it differs from other meditative practices
• Shows beginners how to start their practice, including where and how to do it
• Gives step by step instructions for meditations that are at the core of Jewish meditative practice
• Explains the challenges and rewards of a Jewish meditative practice

Ecstatic Kabbalah

Kabbalah—the secret is out! This mystical tradition is gaining unprecedented recognition. But how do we put this powerful and esoteric world view into practice? With The Ecstatic Kabbalah, Rabbi David Cooper—author of God Is a Verb (100,000 copies sold, Riverhead, 1958), and a renowned leader of the Jewish meditation movement—provides practical exercises on the path toward “mending the soul,” the fundamental Jewish experience that brings union with the Divine.

- With meditation techniques for both beginning and advanced practitioners, The Ecstatic Kabbalah guides listeners into awareness of the “presence of light” with experiential practices for touching the four worlds of mystical Judaism: Physical—breath work and mind-body harmonization
- Emotional—tone the divine names as an expression of devotion
- Mental—learn the histories of these techniques
- Spiritual—stabilize your connection with divine presence

Finally, the long-sequestered doors of Kabbalah are open to all listeners, as they are invited to dwell in the embrace of the Divine with The Ecstatic Kabbalah’s practices of daily renewal.

Jewish Meditation

Kaplan shows that meditation is consistent with traditional Jewish thought and practice. The book presents a variety of meditative techniques to help make the reader a better person, and develop a closer relationship to God.

Living in Divine Space

What is meditation? Many people mistakenly understand it as an attempt to clear the mind and thereby transcend the intellect. It is not that. As Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh explains in this work on kabbalah and meditation, meditation is meant to refine our intellect to become a channel for Divine consciousness.

In this work, the rabbi guides us through kabbalistic meditation, a system rooted in basic Judaic teachings, also useful to practitioners of other spiritual disciplines. The core meditative exercise presented here is examined at length through the prism of Kabbalistic thought. It focuses on positive thinking, Divine love, and negation of any negative influences.

The exercise is both a meditation in itself and a platform for other meditations, and involves essentially imagining oneself in a six-sided "thought cube" which creates a protective, spiritual "sanctuary" around oneself. Within this sacred space one can safely open one's heart in prayer.

The purpose of kabbalistic meditation, ultimately, is to transform our state of mind from one of self-consciousness to Divine consciousness, and in Living in Divine Space the rabbi offers us the tools to do just that.

The kabbalistic meditation presented is based on the six constant commandments of the Torah. There are as follows:

Above: belief in G-d
Below: negation of belief in other gods
Front: belief that G-d is one
Right: love of G-d
Left: fear of G-d
Back: shielding the mind from negativity

Standing in the Divine space we create through our kabbalistic meditation, we lift our voices in heartfelt prayer to discover Him with all our heart and being.

Meditation from the Heart of Judaism

Techniques explained by the masters—for today’s spiritual seeker
Meditation is designed to give you direct access to the spiritual. Whether it’s through deep breathing during a busy day, listening to the quiet after turning off the car radio, chanting in prayer, or ten minutes of visualization exercises each morning, meditation takes many forms. But it is always a personal method of centering our spiritual self.
Meditation has long been practiced in the Jewish community as a powerful tool to transcend words, personality, and ego and to directly experience the divine. Inspiring yet practical, this introduction to meditation from a Jewish perspective approaches it in a new and illuminating way: As it is personally practiced by today’s most experienced Jewish meditators from around the world.
A “how to” guide for both beginning and experienced meditators, Meditation from the Heart of Judaism will help you start meditating or help you enhance your practice. Meditation is a Jewish spiritual resource for today that can benefit people of all faiths and backgrounds—and help us add spiritual energy to our lives. Contributors include:

Sylvia Boorstein • Alan Brill • Andrea Cohen-Keiner • David Cooper • Avram Davis • Nan Fink • Steve Fisdel • Shefa Gold • Lynn Gottleib • Edward Hoffman • Lawrence Kushner • Alan Lew • Shaul Magid • Daniel C. Matt • Jonathan Omer-Man • Mindy Ribner • Susie Schneider • Rami M. Shapiro • Shohama Wiener • Sheila Peltz Weinberg • Laibl Wolf • David Zeller

Seek My Face

The new Jewish spirituality lies somewhere between God’s elusive presence in our world and our search for authentic language to describe it.
Personal journeys seldom have a clear beginning, and they rarely have a definite end. If there is an end to our journey, surely it is one that leads to some measure of wisdom, and thence back to its own beginning. But somewhere along the way, we come to realize that we must know where we have been going, why we have been going. Most of all, we come to understand as best we can the One who sends us on our way.
—from the Introduction
Rabbi Arthur Green leads us on a journey of discovery to seek God, the world, and ourselves. One of the most influential Jewish thinkers of our time, Green has created a roadmap of meaning for our lives in the light of Jewish mysticism, using the Hebrew letters that make up the divine name:
Yod— Reality at the beginning. God as the oneness of being at the outset, before it unfolds into our universe.
Heh— Creation and God’s presence in the world. A renewed faith in God as Creator has powerful implications for us today.
Vav— Revelation, the central faith claim of Judaism and the claim it makes on our lives.
Heh— Redemption and our return to God through the life of Torah and by participating in the ongoing repair of the world.
A personal and honest framework of understanding for the seeker, this revised and updated edition of a classic sheds new light on our search for the divine presence in our everyday lives.

Sefer Yetzirah

Now in its 7th printing since republication in 1997, the Sefer Yetzirah has established itself as a primary source for all serious students of Kabbalah. Rabbi Kaplan’s translation of this oldest and most mysterious of all Kabbalistic texts provides a unique perspective on the meditative and magical aspects of Kabbalah. He expounds on the dynamics of the spiritual domain, the worlds of Sefirot, souls and angels. This translation is based on Gra version of the Sefer Yetzirah and includes the author’s extraordinary commentary on all its mystical aspects including kabbalistic astrology, Ezekiel’s vision and the 231 gates. Also included are three alternative versions to make this volume the most complete work on the Sefer Yetzirah available in English.

The Enneagram and Kabbalah

Patterns in our lives may escape us; reasons for our behavior often confuse us. To help us better understand the interplay of these dynamics, Rabbi Howard Addison combines—for the first time—two of the most powerful maps of consciousness known to humanity: the Tree of Life (the Sefirot) from the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, and the nine-pointed Enneagram that was developed over several generations by mystics of several spiritual traditions.
Individually, each offers guidance and wisdom; together, they show the forces that propel us and shape our personalities and behavior. Most important, the two suggest how we can live more harmoniously with ourselves and with others, minimize friction and tension, and discover our own spiritual gateway to God.
According to some scientific theories, our personalities are a result of our upbringing and genetic code. But, even if scientists and psychologists can explain the physical and emotional aspects of how we respond to stress, anxiety, anger and love, how do we explain the spiritual drive behind our emotions and personalities?
The Kabbalah claims that each person’s soul is rooted in a different aspect of God’s personality, in one of the Sefirot that constitute the Etz Chayim, the Tree of Life. By looking through the lens of Kabbalah at the nine personalities of the Enneagram, Rabbi Howard Addison reveals the extraordinary correspondence between the two systems. He adapts classical kabbalistic spiritual practices to the Enneagram’s nine personality types, creating a powerful combined tool to enhance your personal spiritual self-discovery.
This pioneering book shows that when brought together the Enneagram and Kabbalah may help you understand your own deepest motivations and the motivations of those around you, thus opening wider the gate to personal growth.

The Kabbalah Experience

The integrated study of Tarot and the Judaic teaching of the Kabbalah, presented in workbook style to take the reader on
a journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening

Kabbalah is the Judaic path of mystical self-revelation. The word Kabbalah means “from mouth to ear”, indicating that this system originated as an oral teaching between teacher and pupil. The Kabbalah Experience leads the reader, through a series of structured exercises, on an experiential journey of self-discovery into the Tree of Life which lies at the heart of Kabbalah. In a unique combination of Tarot and Kabbalah, the reader “climbs” the Tree of Life by interacting with the 10 Holy Sephiroth and the 22 Paths which together make up the traditional 32 Places of Wisdom. The Sephiroth are approached through the imagery of a series of Inner Temples, while the Paths are approached through the related 22 Tarot cards. This powerful process of initiation results in a profound spiritual awakening.