Reviews

“Ish Shalom brings to light the practical meditative techniques regarding the five dimensions of the soul, transmigration, and other esoteric dimensions taught be Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) in Tsefat in the sixteenth century, as transmitted via his disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital, to help the mystical pilgrim soul achieve in one lifetime what could take many life-times via reincarnation. Through deep intricately researched brilliantly sleuthed, eloquently revealed analysis, Ish Shalom illuminatingly guides us in penetrating a most complex corpus of mystical texts associated with the Lurianic oeuvre to take the careful reader on a scholarly journey into the realm of mystical teachings and practices never before available to English readers in amazingly a clear lucid manner.

This book is important and groundbreaking for many reasons, one of which is its brilliant comparison of Jewish mystical understandings with those of far eastern religions, noting parallels between Vajrayana teachings of Tibetan Buddhism tantric of the Bon School, Hindu Tantric tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism and Muktananda’s lineage of the Hindu tantra, and Lurianic Kabbalah in terms of the relationship between, sleeping, dreaming, and the journey beyond the waystation of “death.” These similarities, while not coterminous, may point to common mystical insights that arose across cultures and wisdom streams. The text encourages one to consider the possibility that certain dimensions of human mystical experience share a common core archetype (Jung) across traditions, cultures, and religions.

This is not all Ish-Shalom brilliantly achieves. He casts new light on what some consider an “untranslatable” and mostly impenetrable demanding obtuse Borgean labyrinthine body of esoteric texts. A must read for anyone interested in Kabbalah studies, mystical texts and traditions, and Jewish thought. While an outstanding example of academic excellence or rigorous analysis, the book also provides entry to the seeker generation on the path via translations of esoteric practices that have not been made available to the English reading world before.

This outstanding book, that is a true tour de force, is recommended for all libraries and includes scholarly bibliographical references and indexes, with learned footnotes.”

— David B. Levy, AJL News and Reviews, July/August 2022

“In Sleep, Death, and Rebirth, Zvi Ish-Shalom offers us an intricately researched, brilliantly dissected, expansively theorized, and elegantly constructed study of Lurianic cosmology and its interface with contemplative practice.”

— Shaul Magid, Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College (from the Preface)

“Paradoxically, Lurianic Kabbalah is the most widely circulated and yet the most inaccessible form of Jewish mysticism. There is no way in, one has to study it all and then figure it out. Zvi Ish-Shalom’s study of Lurianic soul theory is both careful and brazen, revealing secrets and addressing this spirituality with complete command of the system and also a bracing clarity. A bold aspect of this practice is its frank accessing of the soul and its reincarnation, the idea that the kabbalist can insert themself into the processes of death and rebirth. Zvi Ish-Shalom has mastered the texts, the scholarly analyses and, importantly, the cross-cultural and theoretical studies that must be brought to bear on any discussion of this esoteric practice. In so doing, he fulfills his stated mission of writing ‘a work of scholarship in the tradition of Western academia and/or as a literal/literary extension of the mystical tradition of Isaac Luria.’”

— Rabbi Pinchas Giller, Professor in Medieval Thought, American Jewish University

“With this new volume, Ish-Shalom provides new insight into the vast and understudied world of Lurianic Kabbalah. With simultaneous accessibility and rigor, his analysis of contemplative exercises associated with sleep in the Lurianic corpus reveals a productive tension between dualism and monism. This important new study considers the paradoxes inherent in the processes of the deconstruction and fragmentation of the soul and escape from the cycle of rebirth in Lurianic Kabbalah. Ish-Shalom’s insightful analysis casts new light on these texts and calls into question dichotomies that have long been considered essential to this mystical system. This study also advances a reconsideration of the distinction between primary and secondary modes of writing, and suggests a middle path that blurs scholarly analysis and the kabbalistic text without undermining the integrity of each. A must-read for anyone interested in Kabbalah studies, mystical literature, or Jewish thought.”

— Dr. Hartley Lachter, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion Studies, Lehigh University

“In this bold study, Zvi Ish-Shalom takes the reader along on the surprising adventures of sleep and dreaming in the notoriously complex tradition of Lurianic kabbalah. Few scholars have had the temerity to plunge into the labyrinthine teachings of Isaac Luria and pursue book-length studies. Fewer yet have employed deconstructive strategies as a way of actually participating in the Lurianic tradition, adopting both emic and etic (internal kabbalistic and external academic) methodologies to explain the motives, techniques, and effects of these nocturnal strategies for changing oneself and the cosmos. Treating Lurianic myth as story or fiction provides the non-traditional reader the distance to participate in the author’s process of interpretation, ultimately embodying the unitive vision that the texts portray.
The author seeks not only to provide a rigorous academic analysis of the topics, but also to provide entry to seekers on the path through translations of esoteric practices that have not been made available to the English reader before. The adept’s goal is ultimately to seek ‘the total dissolution of hierarchical division between body, soul, and cosmos.’ According to Ish-Shalom’s thesis of Integral Monism, the ultimate end is that the soul is materialized and the physical body divinized. In this way, he seeks to overturn long-held assumptions about dualism within Lurianic teaching, supplanting it with a dialectical vision of the Ari’s doctrine comprising monism as well—an erasure of all hierarchies, cosmic and human.”

— Joel Hecker, Professor of Jewish Mysticism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College