The Essential Kabbalah Author:Daniel C. Matt Kabbalah emerged as a distinct movement within Judiasm in medieval Europe, and from the beginning it was both committed to traditional observance and profoundly radical. The Kabbalists made the fantastic claim that their mystical teachings derived from the Garden of Eden. This suggests that Kabbalah conveys our original nature: the unbounded a... more »wareness of Adam and Eve, which we have lost as the inevitable consequence of tasting the fruit of knowledge. The kabbalist yearns to recover that primordial tradition, to regain cosmic consciousness, without renouncing the world. The Essential Kabbalah offers insightful accounts of the primary aspects of Jewish mysticism, including Ein Sof (the radical transcendence of God), the Sefirot (the ten divine attributes, and the Shekhinah (the fiminine aspect of God). A crucial and momentous contribution to the normally esoteric world of Jewish mysticism, The Essential Kabbalah is a rich and vital resource for the contemporary spiritual seeker.« less