While many contemporary authors promise to make the Kabbalah simple and easy to understand, David Rosenberg, the author of over 20 books of poetry, translation, and essays, offers a complicated way into this sacred text. He notes at the outset: The Kabbalah "presents a way of searching for meaning. It ranges from dreams to fear and desire, putting aside all boundaries and taboos in the search for what is truly alive. Just as it discriminates between thought and desire in the crucible of the sexual act, it is passionate about its enemy: the staving off of deadness, of hatred, and misunderstanding."
Rosenberg's translations of the Kabbalah texts richly conveys their mythic, erotic, and spiritual emanations. Here the Garden of Eden, the soul, heavenly angels and demons, the Tree of Life, and characters from the Bible challenge us to see the connections between body and soul, science and religion, life and death. In a fascinating chapter titled "How to Receive the Kabbalah," Rosenberg describes a seminar on dreams, which he calls "practical Kabbalah . . . only concerned with success and career," and a daydream about an Oprah Winfrey program laced with quotes and ideas from the Zohar, which he characterizes as a "translation into popular culture of the creative Kabbalist." He opts for an approach with a deeper attention to mystery: "Whereas we are caught in mysteries of awe, fear, or the lottery of success, the Kabbalists use mystery to see themselves and to reimagine what is lost."
The latter can be a scary ride. "The Kabbalah is wilder than most will tell you because it is literally about wildness. It occupies the in between; it waits on the uncertainty of letting ourselves travel the dream and a new desire." The author's personal journey in "the Kabbalah as it is written" arouses our desire to draw closer to this profound religious text and its layered meanings.