I have been a big fan of this book through several editions. I teach introductory classes on Kabbalah, and have found this book very helpful to both Jews and non-Jews who want a book with short, meaningful daily meditations on Kabbalistic stories, prayers, and spiritual advice. The author studied for years with a number of well-known Kabbalah teachers, and her careful selections of brief items from the Kabbalah make it more accessible to harried modern readers with heavily congested schedules.

I am a Christian...
I read this book because it was given to me by a friend. I wasnt disappointed... but it wasnt exactly enchanting either. Basically, this book gives a good history of the practices of Kaballah. However, the author mostly ignores the ancient practices, and skips to the middle ages. Basically, the Author outlines the three main practices of Kaballah, tells where they came from and gives a very general idea of how they are practiced. You wont find a guide to practicing Kaballah in here... and you wont find a guide to enhancing your own meditations. I did find it slightly helpful, and it gave me a few ideas for enhancing my meditations - but for the most part it isnt worth your time.
I wouldnt recommend this to Christians, because it only gives you a history from about the mid-ages onward. I was hoping to atleast find some insight into how the ancients practiced Kaballah, but the book only makes a few references to the ancients.
The only people i would recommend this book to are people who are only seeking a history of Kaballistic practices, and curiosity seekers looking to find out more about what Kaballah is and where it came from.

I bought this book believing it would teach how to practise the Kabbalah.

This book is more a history of Kabbalistic though and practises since the middle ages.

If you want to learn the history of the Kabbalah this is a very good book, and is clearly written.

If you want to learn to practise the Kabbalah keep looking. This is the seventh Kabbalaistic book I have read, and I can not recommend any of the others in clear conscience. I have have heard good things about "9 1/2 mystics:..." but I have not read that one yet.

I will say one thing the "the tree of life" on page 15, and other places does not match the tree of life diagrams in other kabbalistic books I have read.

Please E-mail me if you have questions or comments about my review. Two Bears.

Wah doh Ogedoda (We give thanks Great Spirit)

This book was first written back in the '60's and published in the early 70's, when so many Jews were going to Eastern religions in search of the spirituality that (they thought) was not in Judaism. At that point in time, there was -- hard as it is to believe now -- very little material available about Jewish mysticism for the popular-level English reader. Seekers either had to struggle through the post-Ph.D.-level heaviness of Gershom Scholem's academic style, or learn Hebrew and read the source texts. Either was a daunting task for the casual seeker who just wanted some authentic info about kabbalah and how the Jewish mystics practiced its forms of meditation, etc..

Enter Perle Epstein (now Perle Besserman). She was already doing a series on the various forms of mysticism, and had already covered Buddhism, Zen, etc., so she decided her next project would be on the mysticism of her own Jewish background.

(As an interesting aside: Like so many assimilated Jews of that era, Epstein came to mysticism and meditation through yoga and Hinduism first, and was not a religious Jew when she began the "Kabbalah" project. So, she had a two-fold struggle: (1) to find the teachings, and (2) to confront her own issues and stereotypes about the Orthodox Jews she was interviewing. The personal story of these struggles and how she collected the material for "Kabbalah" is told in "Pilgrimage: Adventures of a Wandering Jew" which, as far as I know, is out of print but well worth tracking down a copy.)

The influence of her Eastern studies and practical experience with Hindu gurus and Zen masters can be seen in "Kabbalah," such as the way she describes the 16th-century Safed community of Rabbi Isaac Luria as a "Jewish Shangri-la" and a sort of ashram community, -- which, in a sense, it was. This made the teachings very understandable people who were already familiar with the Eastern forms of meditation. In fact, it was the first popular book I know of that clearly identified some of the practices as forms of visualization, use of mantras, etc.

In my opinion, these types of cross-cultural comparisons are very helpful to Jews (and others) who want an introduction to how Jewish mysticism has been practiced down through the centuries. The book is not an academic tome, but is written in a clear popular, almost poetic style that I found a delight to read the first time around, and have returned to again and again. For many years during the 70's and 80's, this book was my #2 recommendation to Jewish beginners in kabbalah, as well as non-Jews wanting to know something about our spirituality. (my #1 recommendation was "9 1/2 Mystics" by Herbert Weiner).

I am delighted to see that Epstein's book is available again, so I can recommend it on my website.

There was interesting anecdotes and bits of wisdom scattered thoughout this book. But the gist of what they had to say, the importance of doing Zazen, could have been told in a short essay instead of 163 pages. It showed creativity on their part to expand it as well as they did. Still, there are books on this subject that are better than this one.

This is one of the best book on Zen for Westerners that I know. Along with Steve Hagen's Buddhism Plain and Simple, Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism without Beliefs, Mark Epstein's books on Zen, and Guy Claxton's The Heart of Buddhism, it offers a vision of Zen Buddhism stripped of its monastic trappings and religious attachments. This book is Zen and all spiritual practice seen clearly. (Thus, as a person who still clings to his Christian heritage, Grassroots Zen has helped me see what is worth keeping and what must be let go in Christian spiritual practice.) Grassroots Zen works because the authors have tried it all and decided to work for a community of practice that is democratic and open, one that is unafraid to leave behind the shaved heads, the abbot's rules, and the roshi's robes.

The book is organized around three basic categories: time, space, and motion. Our ways of seeing time, space, and motion, through the eyes of a persisting "self" standing at the center and peering out, deeply shape our experience of existence, our sense of who we are and what we are doing in our strange appearance on a minor planet. In approaching Zen this way, the authors are especially successful in opening up the deep challenge offered by Zen to our commonsense ways of shaping experience.

Grassroots Zen urges us to stop making existence a category and a story and to instead leave it as it is, as we find it: an extraordinary experience. Here is where the book is at its best as the authors try to speak of what the experience of living like that is like, without arguing for yet one more story among the long and dreary menu of Western accounts of enlightenment or of the quest for no-self or for the true self.

For me, this makes Zen more anti-story than story-free, a practice that constantly prompts us to observe the narratives unfolding in our head and instead to wait for, and attend to, the freedom and freshness of the never-ending story of the present moment with all of its difficulties, humor, pain, and joy.

As Basho put it in his lovely Haiku (A Haiku is included with each chapter heading): Hello: Light the fire: I'll bring inside a lovely bright ball of snow!

I stumbled on this book at my local library. It is a good and easy read for students of Zen. The examples are as much Dharma talks about living life in the present and owning what is presented by life to a person. Some examples are clearer than others, but then it could be I was not ready to receive them. I plan on adding the book to my growing library of Buddhist literature.