Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul

by David Patterson

Overcoming Alienation: A Kabbalistic Reflection on the Five Levels of the Soul responds to a pervasive crisis that has overwhelmed the human soul. Rooted in Jewish mystical teachings on the five levels of the soul, the book achieves a deeper understanding of what the soul is and determines what is needful for its life. Turning to Torah and Talmud, to Midrash and Kabbalah, the book draws on millennia of the Jewish teachings that have gone into the nurturing of the soul. Because those teachings are originally articulated in Hebrew, the holy tongue, the book examines what the Hebrew language reveals about the substance and significance of the soul. This is a book designed to speak to anyone who feels a sense of alienation deep within. It penetrates the depth dimensions of the soul to come to the aid of anyone whose soul has silently cried out for meaning.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2008

About the author

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David Patterson holds the Hillel Feinberg Chair in Holocaust Studies in the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. A member of the World Union of Jewish Studies and the Association for Jewish Studies, he has delivered lectures at numerous universities and community organizations throughout the world. He is a participant in the Weinstein Symposium on the Holocaust, a member of the Facing History and Ourselves International Board of Advisors, and a member of the Scholars' Platform for the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre, Cambridge, England. He also serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Stephen S. Weinstein Series in Post-Holocaust Studies, published by the University of Washington Press.

He has also translated literary works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.