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Nine and a Half Mystics: The Kabbala Today
From Simon & Schuster, Nine and a Half Mystics is Herbert Weiner's exploration of the Kabbalah today.
This revised edition of a modern classic includes a new foreword by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and an afterword by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, editor of The The Steinsaltz Edition , as well as a coda by the author in which he explores the many paths being traveled today in the search for the treasures of the Kabbalah.
This revised edition of a modern classic includes a new foreword by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and an afterword by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, editor of The The Steinsaltz Edition , as well as a coda by the author in which he explores the many paths being traveled today in the search for the treasures of the Kabbalah.
420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 23, 2024
Most often, the creative effort that's not quite perfect satisfies me more than any streamlined, slick classic. For instance, demo track, alternate take, live version of a song rather than its over-played, sterile, or sanitized studio cut. Same goes for this memoir. Originally published 1969, that dawn of the Aquarian Age infusing within these searching and musing pages much of its aspiring zeitgeist.
Timothy Leary pops up, and in its 1991 update, Alan Watts. Rabbi Weiner tackles, as a Reform Jew, the tough question. If Kabbalah, like Talmud, Torah, and traditions, root in a Big Boom revelation as theophany among those who practice them, what if, as a doubting modern, I can't lull myself into playing along with the game that all the Law thundered down upon Moses from Sinai's sky; that if one doesn't follow Orthodox observance, then one's claim to follow God's instructions is nullified?
This nagging problem frames Weiner's soul-search, ca. 1967, but spanning his career in New Jersey and Jerusalem, of visiting scholars such as Gershom Scholem; the odd, touching emigre recluse--particularly memorable in Weiner's incisive character profile--S.T. Setzer; Rav Kook's son; Abraham Chen; Bratslav adherents; offshoot Israeli adepts; and the Lubavitcher Rebbe to figure out how what the spirit of the Torah as expressed through Luria, the Baal Shem Tov, and recent students and teachers may say for contemporary Jews, as many then at his writing, as today, drift away from traditional mindsets for either liberal denominations, or nowadays, no affiliation at all.
His narrative proves engaging. Weiner fails to penetrate into a few enclaves to elucidate how they embody the teachings, but after all, his honesty refuses to let him lapse into romantic or illusory states. Instead, he struggles with his fears of silence, the temptation to fill psychic space with raw despair, and his illnesses which in a post-Shoah age also seem to deny the dismissals that evil is due to human lack of understanding of higher purposes as viewed from above our puny, misled comprehension and weak wills. A salutary confrontation with post-Shoah, late-20c. existentialism.
Although his effort falls short of perfection, that fumbled leap itself testifies to the embodied frailty within humans, in the traditional Kabbalistic Lurianic model. I'd have wished he'd clarified and deepened his look at how in the last century, Yehuda Ashlag in the Holy City upended a standard orientation of broken vessels--and the too-glibly parroted as progressive pablum rather than a tougher interpretation of the gut work of "tikkun"--into Rav Kook's (first-gen) perception that we, not whomever occupies the heavens, must fix our mess in our flat field, not a primordial elevation.
After this, I happened across the 2024 "Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism" by Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg (see my review). As if answering his (since departed) rabbinical colleague, Greenberg avers that after the devastation wrought by the Reich, Stalin and misguided minions, it's left to inept humanity to clean up the rubble. That no messiah or help from above may descend to us. For the third time in Jewish history a "tzimtzum" retraction of the divine presence has occurred. Waiting for intervention from on high won't cut it if we hope to crawl out of the chaos we inherit.
9 1/2's newer ed. has a brief introduction by Elie Wiesel, a coda from Weiner expanding his thoughts a generation hence, and a deft afterward by the eminent Adin Steinsaltz which offers this sagacious expert's characteristic clarity in explaining how mystical Jewish approaches because of the Mosaic origin were never perceived apart from the rest of any divine message transmitted. Therefore, in my estimation, those today who peddle Kabbalah as lucrative and pricy self-care err, for this body of knowledge is inextricably bound up with the rest of Jewish life, thought, and action, not an esoteric, let alone New Age-tainted, commodified red-string, dispiriting detour diverging from proper Torah.
While the book consumes your attention, it rewards your investment. Taken seriously, with patience for Weiner's tendency to digress as he works out his thinking on the page as informal journaling, or casual journalistic style, this compositional combo sharpens its impact even if it tracks rough spots as he doggedly perseveres past doubt or drift. I wanted a travel guide as I entered a misinterpreted, distorted, debased, frequently caricatured topic. This beckoned me "safely" past what can be self-deluding danger zones for those lacking Jewish grounding. As Weiner's generally taking pains to distance himself from less ethical or principled claimants, his caution is wise, even if he winds up hanging out with the likes of Edgar Cayce devotees on his quest. I wish he'd stayed around on the planet long enough to dilute the once-by-Madonna well endowed Kabbalah Center's magical H20.
Timothy Leary pops up, and in its 1991 update, Alan Watts. Rabbi Weiner tackles, as a Reform Jew, the tough question. If Kabbalah, like Talmud, Torah, and traditions, root in a Big Boom revelation as theophany among those who practice them, what if, as a doubting modern, I can't lull myself into playing along with the game that all the Law thundered down upon Moses from Sinai's sky; that if one doesn't follow Orthodox observance, then one's claim to follow God's instructions is nullified?
This nagging problem frames Weiner's soul-search, ca. 1967, but spanning his career in New Jersey and Jerusalem, of visiting scholars such as Gershom Scholem; the odd, touching emigre recluse--particularly memorable in Weiner's incisive character profile--S.T. Setzer; Rav Kook's son; Abraham Chen; Bratslav adherents; offshoot Israeli adepts; and the Lubavitcher Rebbe to figure out how what the spirit of the Torah as expressed through Luria, the Baal Shem Tov, and recent students and teachers may say for contemporary Jews, as many then at his writing, as today, drift away from traditional mindsets for either liberal denominations, or nowadays, no affiliation at all.
His narrative proves engaging. Weiner fails to penetrate into a few enclaves to elucidate how they embody the teachings, but after all, his honesty refuses to let him lapse into romantic or illusory states. Instead, he struggles with his fears of silence, the temptation to fill psychic space with raw despair, and his illnesses which in a post-Shoah age also seem to deny the dismissals that evil is due to human lack of understanding of higher purposes as viewed from above our puny, misled comprehension and weak wills. A salutary confrontation with post-Shoah, late-20c. existentialism.
Although his effort falls short of perfection, that fumbled leap itself testifies to the embodied frailty within humans, in the traditional Kabbalistic Lurianic model. I'd have wished he'd clarified and deepened his look at how in the last century, Yehuda Ashlag in the Holy City upended a standard orientation of broken vessels--and the too-glibly parroted as progressive pablum rather than a tougher interpretation of the gut work of "tikkun"--into Rav Kook's (first-gen) perception that we, not whomever occupies the heavens, must fix our mess in our flat field, not a primordial elevation.
After this, I happened across the 2024 "Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism" by Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg (see my review). As if answering his (since departed) rabbinical colleague, Greenberg avers that after the devastation wrought by the Reich, Stalin and misguided minions, it's left to inept humanity to clean up the rubble. That no messiah or help from above may descend to us. For the third time in Jewish history a "tzimtzum" retraction of the divine presence has occurred. Waiting for intervention from on high won't cut it if we hope to crawl out of the chaos we inherit.
9 1/2's newer ed. has a brief introduction by Elie Wiesel, a coda from Weiner expanding his thoughts a generation hence, and a deft afterward by the eminent Adin Steinsaltz which offers this sagacious expert's characteristic clarity in explaining how mystical Jewish approaches because of the Mosaic origin were never perceived apart from the rest of any divine message transmitted. Therefore, in my estimation, those today who peddle Kabbalah as lucrative and pricy self-care err, for this body of knowledge is inextricably bound up with the rest of Jewish life, thought, and action, not an esoteric, let alone New Age-tainted, commodified red-string, dispiriting detour diverging from proper Torah.
While the book consumes your attention, it rewards your investment. Taken seriously, with patience for Weiner's tendency to digress as he works out his thinking on the page as informal journaling, or casual journalistic style, this compositional combo sharpens its impact even if it tracks rough spots as he doggedly perseveres past doubt or drift. I wanted a travel guide as I entered a misinterpreted, distorted, debased, frequently caricatured topic. This beckoned me "safely" past what can be self-deluding danger zones for those lacking Jewish grounding. As Weiner's generally taking pains to distance himself from less ethical or principled claimants, his caution is wise, even if he winds up hanging out with the likes of Edgar Cayce devotees on his quest. I wish he'd stayed around on the planet long enough to dilute the once-by-Madonna well endowed Kabbalah Center's magical H20.
August 22, 2012
The Kabbala is of interest to me, but this book...meh. The author is frankly not a very good writer, never has any depth in the details that are actually interesting and instead just presents a fairly disassembled book that does not flow and honestly has left me with a mixed and incomplete understanding of the Kabbala. The book also left me with a fairly depressing view of this philosophy, seeing as even these alleged mystics had serious personal flaws and hardly carried themselves as enlightened individuals (nor were they seemingly even close, save for a couple). There were interesting moments and insights, but he didn't even present a coherent framework of the essentials of the Kabbala. Now I begin my search for another book that will accomplish this. Waste of my time and I almost dont even want to keep this on my bookshelf. I have no earthly idea how anyone could give this 5 stars no matter how into or well versed on the topic one is.
November 25, 2010
Not the kind of book you read from cover to cover but it's been on my shelf since the teenage mysticism years and a periodic dip back in is a pleasure. Weiner's style is anecdotal rather than scholarly but packs in a lot of detail - you have to absorb quite a bit of Jewish religious history on the fly, rather than getting it in an expository schoolbook manner.
In the chapter on Gershom Scholem, the legendary Hebrew University scholar, Weiner quotes an unnamed Jerusalem rabbi on the subject of the scientific scholars of mysticism, "They are like accountants, they know where the wealth is, its location and value. But it doesn't belong to them. They cannot use it."
In the chapter on Gershom Scholem, the legendary Hebrew University scholar, Weiner quotes an unnamed Jerusalem rabbi on the subject of the scientific scholars of mysticism, "They are like accountants, they know where the wealth is, its location and value. But it doesn't belong to them. They cannot use it."
September 6, 2020
It's about the people and the "tribes" and cultures of which they are part. The ideas of the kabbalah are background. The writing is very good and did not seem to me dated. Many of the characters the author meets are familiar names who have had a more lasting impact than perhaps he imagined they would. The author's personal perspective influences his tone and "evaluation" significantly, and after a few chapters his dissatisfaction with each approach he encounters becomes somewhat predictable and almost depressing... but the final chapters redeemed this for me, both because of the honest and open way the author writes of his perspective and also because of his ideas about insights from the six day war.
Overall I really enjoyed reading this, meeting each of the characters and learning about their background and the way they lived when the author spent time with them. It paints a broad and diverse picture of Judaism, with much that is beautiful and precious, and much room for improvement.
Overall I really enjoyed reading this, meeting each of the characters and learning about their background and the way they lived when the author spent time with them. It paints a broad and diverse picture of Judaism, with much that is beautiful and precious, and much room for improvement.
December 15, 2019
A really interesting look at Kabbalah and Chassidic thought through the journey of a Jewish seeker and Reform Rabbi in the 1960s. I enjoyed a few chapters on thinkers or movements that I new less about, and I also enjoyed seeing movements like Chabad and Breslov through the eyes of this rabbi in the 60s. Those movements had both not yet reached in the 1960s the widespread success and fame that they have earned today. So reading about them in this book was an interesting journey.
November 5, 2021
A visit into the worlds of mystical Judaism circa 1969 (mine is an earlier edition with a different cover). There is some discussion of kabbala and philosophy, but a great deal of it is a very 'othering' approach to some of the evident peculiarities of the Hasidic movement.
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February 1, 2020Mine is an older edition with a different cover. Paperback.
November 25, 2018
Herbert Weiner takes
November 5, 2016
I'd read this book around 20 years ago, and this time around it got even better. It is part social anthrolpology, part theology, part personal voyage of discovery. Weiner, who published the first edition at the end of the sixties, was truly ahead of his time. Having done his "research" mostly in the late 40's though the early 60's, he was out in front of the curve of the Age of Aquarius and the New Age. in fact, the publication of the first edition of this book led immediately to his being approached by Alan Watts (pretty much the original popularizer of "mysticism") and subsequently becoming a regular on the "new age" circuit in the 70's and beyond. For the most part, it is quite easy to read and, without having any special stylistic attributes, it is compelling reading for those interested in this subject. A classic in its genre, for sure.
April 17, 2013
I read when I was 19. Some terrific chapters in this book.
September 5, 2014
excellent, readable journey of one reform rabbi's journeys in kaballah and hasidism
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews