I borrowed this book and read it for the first time about 15 years ago. How could such a slim volume have so much wisdom and power and poetry in it? Both my wife and I found it deeply moving and enlightening as we explored what it meant to be Jews in a modern world, while part of a faith and tradition that had deep and ancient roots. When I tried to buy a copy, I learned that it was out of print and had been for a while. We decided that this was an unacceptable situation. We heard about so many people who loved this book and wanted to share it with others. So, we started Jewish Lights Publishing to bring it back into print. Read it and you'll understand why, whether you are Jewish or Christian or just seeking. And, the whole thing is in calligraphy from Larry Kushner's own hand -- just the icing on this mystical treat.

This is a beautiful book. I look at it from time to time and remember the beauty of the hebrew alphabet and words that can be formed. We all need to be reminded of the beautiful creation of the world from time to time.

Though I have returned to this book again and again, it always seems fresh. Pure gestalt! Kushner's design and words are elegant in their unassuming simplicity, often inducing the mental equivalent of a double-take. This book is full of wonderful inspiration for use in a meditative practice.

Richard Seidman's Oracle of the Kabbalah is a gift for those seeking to apply traditional wisdom to their everyday lives. The ancient meanings of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are presented along with inspirational discussions that run the gamut from the humorous to the profound and draw on other wisdom traditions. The author's personal reflections help anchor the teachings to our common experiences.

Rabbi Kushner's foward and the author's introduction ground one in the history and application of these mystical letters. The book and its companion set of cards are very user friendly, providing one with an insightful and welcome perspective when seeking direction.

I'm grateful to Richard Seidman for providing me with both a compassionate form of guidance and a readily accessible introduction to these sacred letters. This is a book that I'll refer to again and again.

Usually people don't think of Jews as being mystics, but many of us are. Jewish mysticism is different from New Age mystricism in that Jewish mysticism is grounded in text -- and letters. From there, it takes flight. This book is a good start for Jews and non-Jews alike, especially if you have trouble with the conventional idea of Big-Guy-in-the-Sky God. If the idea of hidden depths in Hebrew letters intrigues you, also take a look at Larry Kushner's "The Book of Letters" ....

Richard Seidman's ORACLE OF THE KABBALAH is a profound, joyful, and beautiful set of divination with accompanying text. Using the model of THE MEDINCE CARDS and others that have followed, Seidman raises the art to a new level. He illuminates the spirituality and magic of the ancient hebrew letters to engage us in the modern tasks of inner decision making and spiritual transformation in our lives for the new millienium. His take on the mystical meanings of the hebrew letters is both Jewish and not, integrating strands of thought from his own varied spiritual and philosophic explorations. THE ORACLE OF THE KABBALLAH raises the genra of divination cards to a seriously ecumenical level of mysticism, witty, touching, helpful and profound.

After being on my shelf to read for months, I found a need when I audited Nancy DeClaisse-Wolford's class in Old Testament at Mercer-McAfee. She guided our class thru the Hebrew Words in using them to parallel the Ugaritic texts! Needless to say, as a poor linguistic student at 70 yr. I was in too deep! But I did gain new interest in learning Hebrew aleph-beit. I also became caught up in Rabbi Kushner's "Book of Words and Book of Letters."

The Hebrew words meaning most to me are, b'rahkah or blessing; hit-la-ha-voot or Ecstasy. Kushner stated: "There can be joy in silence or with tears...in their occasions joyous laughter turns out to be sacred." The word ecstasy also appears in Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, coming at a most dramatic moment!

The word for prayer has meant much: t'fee-lah as the Rabbi uses the phonetic spelling. In his last page for each word he writes a Kavanah or Living Spiritual Talk: "In prayer you need to know a 'script' so well that you can recite the words on 'auto-pilot' but not so well that the words are habitual."

In the beginning for each word there are cogent, potent words of description. On n'shah-mah or Soul: "You are (like everyone else ...not crazy) a barely coherent hodgepodge of contradictory thoughts, feelings and deeds! What keeps you 'together' is an imaginary center called a 'self.'" Of course he sprinkles along a few closely related verses of Scripture.

After this "Book of Words," I passed onto "Book of Letters," and next, "God was in this Place and I, i did not know." Again, it was Awesome! A Mystery. What a forcefully creative writer! Retired Chap. Fred W Hood

I thought I understood the meaning of the words presented here, but Kushner's definitions really startled me, challenged me, and engaged me! His unconventional definitions brought new light to so many words I thought I understood, and all too often took for granted. He poignantly demonstrates how words, and the way we define and understand them, affect more than our vocabulary! This is a small book, but it is far from a 'quick read' because its words will enter your thoughts over and over, often when you least expect it, each time offering a new insight, each time helping you understand how the very words we use--and the way we define them--affect our lives and the lives of those around us. It is a book whose 'words' continue to influence long after you close its cover, a book for which I greatly thank the author.

Revelation is like a dream where nothing is without meaning, yet everything is taken from images seemingly incongruous, disconnected among themselves. As in facing a mosaique with the pieces still spread in a casual manner, so man must face the mysteries of faith: with confidence and constance, devotion and awareness. I believe this is one of Kushner's messages: the author is surely one of the masters of "liberal" Judaism, and he hands out to his readers this precious anthology. In a delicate balance between tradition and modernism, between common sense and the respect for values, Rabbi Kushner presents a model of contemporaneous approach to Judaism, where the need for divulging and integration in society does not mean relinquishing the depths of meditation on man's and the world's great themes. "Close your eyes and listen. This is the voice of your Self."

I had never read anything by Lawrence Kushner before, but had heard some of his commentaries on National Public Radio. Recently a friend gave me this book as a birthday present.

What an absolute pleasure it has been to read! Each essay is usually only a few pages long so it is an easy book to find time to read.

He is a great writer, with a wonderful sense of humor, but he delivers some amazingly creative insight and makes you look at your world and what you believe in in a completely fresh new way.

I would highly recommend this book since it is a sampler of his best writings, with a mix of new and previously published material. You will not be disappointed, this is a wonderful read and a great gift.

I've looked many years for a book that is spiritual, but doesn't talk down to kids, to share with my many grandchildren. There is another: "God's Paintbrush" but we have read it so many times that I needed something new. This is it! A wonderful, delightful exploration of who God is, and what God does in the world through us. Cuddle up to your grandchildren with this one.

Kushner writes elegantly of the Jewish faith and introduces children in such a gentle way to their heritage. Lovely book from beginning to end. G-d speaks in this writing.

Through stories and allegories, the words memorized in childhood become guideposts by which it is possible to live a fuller life. New insight to each Commandment is provided by a Jewish scholar and Rabbi Mikva weaves it all together as the original tablet pieces were reunited.

After two decades of practicing Eastern meditation, I found what I felt was missing, thanks to Centering Prayer: the presence of the Personhood of God. (I'd grown tired of mind traps and fruitless stillness, and methods emphasing words, breath control, where meditation really degenerated into my clinging to basically repetitive superstitious gesture. Actually, I'm grateful for such experience because it helps me avoid such things in practicing Centering Prayer). The humble, insightful M. Basil Pennington and his colleagues offer a work that is conversational, not didactic. This book boldly asserts the reality of a loving God. All those years I'd focused on the Void, the Impersonal, an inner Something, Someone, kept prodding me, which I initially rejected as old Catholic-school training that was re-surfacing. Now, for me, the big Drawing Card is that the Divine Person glows as the crux, the heart, the very beauty, of this book. Also, Rabbi Kushner, in his foreword, speaks poignantly on becoming one with God as a "Heart Person" in life. So many insightful people, from many spiritual paths have generously contributed to this book. I'm grateful for it.

kushner's book is quite simply THE book to read if you have any interest at all in jewish mysticism. Totally accessible to anyone. Kushner has written several books after this one and most are also excellent but this is the place to begin.

The only problem I had with this book was that it seemed to brush over some big ideas. Things would be stated that the author seemed to assume the reader would agree with without delving further into it. But I would still reccomend this book, because it's a great example of the many meanings that can be found in the Torah -- even in just one verse!

The title of this book, 'God was in the Place, & I, i Did not Know', may seem a bit cumbersome (and even, to some, looks like it has a typographical error. However, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner draws this title from the Torah, the book of Genesis to be precise. It is the exclamation of Jacob who, upon waking from his dream about the ladder connecting heaven and earth, makes a startling realisation about the reality of the seemingly mundane and ordinary place where he had stopped for the night.

In the prologue, Kushner develops an exegesis and hermeneutic of Genesis 28:16 more fully, and in so doing, illustrates many of the problems we regularly encounter, both in reading scripture as well as in interpreting daily life experience. He places this story in strong connection with the ordinary, even relating the angels on the ladder to common humanity:

'There is another, even more obvious interpretation. The angels did not reside in heaven at all. They lived on earth. They were ordinary human beings. And, like ordinary human beings, they shuttled back and forth between heaven and earth. The trick is to remember, after you descend, what you understood when you were high on the ladder.'

Kushner examines the way in which sages have interpreted this passage, and provides insights into history, psychology, philosophy, and scriptural study in the process. Each interpretation has had what one might call a personal conversation and experience with Jacob. In fact, each of these interpreters is portrayed as being on the ladder, rising and descending. The text is structured in this way. The interpreters are:

+Rashi
Schelomo ben Yitzhaki, Rashi
The key word for this interpretation is awareness. This is very important for making the kind of realisation that Jacob made. It is very important for us as we perceive the presence of God in our own lives.
If I had known God was here, I wouldn't have gone to sleep.

+Kotzk
Menachem Mendl of Kotzk
The key concept here is egotism. Only by stripping away the ego can one begin to understand the presence and the personality of God.
God was here because I was able to subdue my ego.

+Ludomir
Hannah Rachel Werbermacher, the Maid of Ludomir
A remarkable woman, a teacher of the Hasidim (who listened to her teaching through a half-open door, so as to preserve distance, and perhaps preserve a fiction that they were not in fact being taught by a woman), whose insight gave her access to the other side, or the many other sides, of stories being considered.
God is present, even in the midst of evil.

+Mezritch
Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch
The word Maggid means 'storyteller'. Through the stories, here the key is self-reflection, to find meaning in the innermost being, to find that still, small voice that can only speak in silence and the absence of our own activity.
God was here because I stopped being aware of myself.

+Nachmani
Shmuel bar Machmani
Who was Jacob, and why should he know this? Who is God, and why should God do this? These are questions that are historical as much as theological or psychological, and it is in our history and God's history that we find meaning and identity.
I could have climbed this ladder of history.

+De Leon
Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon
A remarkable book, lost for a time, whose existence was denied even by Moses de Leon's widow, the Zohar, gives astonishing insight into the interior of God, reality, and our selves, and how to find a deep connection that is always present and never finished. Attributed to another author, Shimon bar Yohai, Kushner speculates that perhaps they shared the same soul. The completeness of the self of the universe connects through Jacob's story here.
I is the Lord your God

+Ostropol
Shimshon ben Pesach Ostropoler
Beyond the question and awareness of the self of God and the self of the universe is the self, basic and simple, complex and intricate. Rabbi Shimshon put names to the kelipot, the broken shards of creation. We are all a part of a whole, a broken piece in and of ourselves. Our awareness of this helps begin the process of reunion.
I didn't know that my name was part of God's name

Each interpreter's chapter stands on its own merits, but each is connected to the other, and to a wider body of interpretation and scholarship, by the use of side notes and references done in (what I would describe as being) a proto-talmudic structure. The Talmud has been described by some as one of the world's first hypertexts, with cross-links and chains that lead through the text -- this book does similar linking.

Rabbi Kushner concludes by linking all the stories to the reader:

'Each person has a Torah, unique to that person, his or her innermost teaching. Some seem to know their Torahs very early in life and speak and sing them in a myriad of ways. Others spend their whole lives stammering, shaping and rehearsing them. Some are long, some are short. Some are intricate and poetic, others are only a few words, and still others can only be spoken through gesture and example. But every soul has a Torah.'

The relative place of self (both as an I and as an i) in God's life and universe becomes more apparent through these stories. Human beings are important, yet who can be important in relation to God? Yet, who is not important in relation to God? May this work help you discern where God is in your life, and what you are called to be.

As you have gathered from the main review, this book focuses on the meaning of just one verse in Genesis, when Jacob awoke from the ladder dream. Usually Rabbis pick up on a verse just a couple verses back where "the Angels of God were going up and down the ladder". The focus is that they start on Earth and go to Heaven - not the other way around.

This book is great because it is like there is a dialog accross the space-time continuumn with 7 Rabbis in different locations and centuries arguing about their 7 different interpretations.

One interpretation based on the fact that there are two "I's" in the verse spelled differently in Hebrew. It is that my Godlike "I" did not know God was present because my ego "i" was in the way. Jacob's chance to experience God was diminished because the ego "i" was ragiling off its commentary. This concept is similar to Buddism.

Kushner adds an 8th interpretaion in his prolouge - which I won't spoil by going into detail. I heard Kushner talk at a Synagouge in Austin, Texas and he summarized his interpretation by finishing, "Hold up your hands before your eyes. You are looking at the hands of God."

A great book on modern Jewish mystism.