This was an okay book. It’s a selection from the very long book The Zohar which is a commentary on the Books of Moses. I decided not to try to acquire as much of the full multi-volume translation as I could, since for me that would verge on the pedantic, but it is nice to experience other cultures slightly, right. “YOU like that too? I only chose that because I thought you hated it! Shit! What do I do now?” Of course, sometimes people make choices, you know; but full-on flaming rejection is more than a simple “choice”, you know. A lot of Christians do have that attitude, you know—YOU like that too?…. What do I do now?—and not only in relation to Jews, but that conflict is certainly part of the Jewish story. It’s actually not even—You like that too? …. Shit….—limited to the religious sphere, both because of the unavoidable influence of religion on life, and the common though not inevitable negativity central to the human experience.

Anyway, I think that this is fine; it’s actually just as good, in itself, as a Christian commentary on these texts, if rather different, perforce…. It’s actually maybe better than some, since it’s very creative and story-sprinkled, not unlike what I write in reviews sometimes. I’ll even go out on a limb and say (even though the only other language I know is intermediate Spanish) that the English translation probably has some points over the Aramaic original, since the original was apparently written with many archaisms and historicisms and basically unnatural language to try to present it as the work of an earlier century—pedantic enough!—almost as if Rachel Held Evans had written one of her books in Latin, right…. The Middle Ages were actually quite mixed; there was creativity as well as pedantry, (actually there was sensuality as well as asceticism), but even the wise old men weren’t supposed to have too much agency or independence, so even in what would retroactively be a million years before industrialization, the wise old men weren’t supposed to be saying that there was something about God and Infinity that the dead old wise men hadn’t unpacked fully…. So it’s mixed, like everything, trying to wiggle out of that trap. But writing a Bible commentary as a story or series of stories is great, you know; much better than the bloodless Kantian crap that would come into fashion later on.

…. For a long time I didn’t really know what I thought; now, let me say: what a strange book, right.

Though, of course, it would be, for me. 😛

…. *Carly and the rabbis are deep in conversation*

Child Hermes: *taps* *whispers* If we sneak out now, they won’t notice that we’re leaving.

NO OF PAGES: 320 SUB CAT I: Kabbalah SUB CAT II: SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: Zohar - "the Book of Splendor, Radiance, Enlightenment" - has fascinated readers from its first appearance in thirteenth-century Spain until today. It is the major text of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. To assure the acceptance of his work within the Jewish community, a Spanish scholar named Moses de Leon claimed that Zohar was an ancient work of the school of the famous Rabbi Shim'on son of Yohai. Is was not until our own century that critical scholarship demonstrated that the book's author was Moses de Leon himself. His mosaic of Scripture, Midrash, medieval homily, fiction, and fantasy presents what Professor Daniel Matt describes as "a challenge to the normal workings of consciousness [that] dares one to examine one's assumptions about tradition, God, and self."NOTES: Donated by David Daniels. SUBTITLE: The Book of Enlightenment