Tirzah Firestone is a psychotherapist and founding rabbi of the Jewish Renewal Congregation of Boulder, Colorado. Her autobiography, With Roots in Heaven: One Woman's Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith, charted her struggle to proclaim the vibrancy of spiritual integration in a world that still clings tenaciously to separation and exclusivity. On The Woman's Kabbalah: Ecstatic Jewish Practices for Women, an audio presentation, Firestone harvests teachings from this ancient mystical tradition. In this book, the author laments the paucity of material available on the Jewish counterparts to the Hindu poet Mirabai, the Islamic saint Rabi'ah, or the Catholic saint Teresa of Avila. She states: "The Jewish woman's role was forever seen as ancillary to the proclaimed central purpose of Jewish life: the sacred study of Torah and enactment of its laws." Still, Firestone has found seven Jewish women from the second century through the twentieth whose mystical wisdom offers healing and renewal. These courageous and persistent individuals struggled against all odds to keep their faith and vision alive while being harassed and ignored.
For the author, these women demonstrate the essence of true Kabbalah— "the personal experience of receiving wisdom from the divine realms." In seven chapters, Firestone explores the wholeness that these souls brought to the faith through tenacity in exile, reclaiming eros, practical spirituality, recovering feminine wisdom, seeing wholly-darkness and light, bringing purpose into action, and receiving the Holy Spirit. From Beruriah, a brilliant second century Talmudic scholar, to Francesca, a visionary in Safed in the sixteenth century, to Leah Shari'abi, a gifted spiritual teacher who worked in the slums of twentieth century Jerusalem with immigrants from all over the Middle East, here are the inspiring forgotten stories of women who tried to bring about a specific yichud, a unification between severed opposites, such as eros and spirituality, shadow and light, earthiness and the transcendent life. Visit the author online at www.tirzahfirestone.com.
