by David Rosenberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2000
A foolish book of no discernible use to any student of the Kabbalah.
Rosenberg (The Book of David, 1997, etc.) is one of the leading practitioners of New Age Judaism. Here he turns his
attention to the latest flavor of the month—Jewish mysticism. If it's good enough for Madonna and Roseanne (who thankfully are not invoked in this otherwise relentlessly trend-tracing volume), it's certainly good enough for the man who translated The Book of J (1990). Rosenberg likens the Kabbalah to the deep ecology movement, to the search for cosmic consciousness, to Oprah Winfrey—in fact, to just about everything except what it is (namely, a group of sacred texts that were written largely in response to the Hebrew Bible and postbiblical literature like the Midrash). He invokes all the hot-button catchwords of the moment, calling the authors of the Kabbalah "our first postmodern writers." Rosenberg divides his study into four sections, with a new translation of passages from the Zohar (the key work of medieval Jewish mysticism) and other kabbalistic works bracketed by essays that ostensibly put them into an interpretive context. Unfortunately, however, Rosenberg seems to assume a knowledge of Jewish medieval history on the part of his readers, never explaining the circumstances of the embattled Jewish community that produced the Zohar nor the progression of events that created the Christian and Jewish mystical works of the Renaissance in the first place. He is more concerned with linking mystical works to dream interpretation and offering cryptic observations ("Ecosystems also resemble dreams, in that they encompass many worlds") that shed little light upon his murky enterprise. After offering very free translations of apparently random passages from the Zohar, Midrash Rabbah, and Sefer Yezirah, Rosenberg moves on to an interpretive essay that depends heavily upon juxtapositions of texts that are entirely of his own devising. All of this is couched in a ponderous, self-regarding, self-aggrandizing prose that grates on the reader.
A foolish book of no discernible use to any student of the Kabbalah.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60306-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2000
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edited by David Rosenberg
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
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by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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