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Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism
This exploration of the radical, yet ancient, idea that everything and everyone is God will transform how you understand your life and the nature of religion itself. While God is conventionally viewed as an entity separate from us, there are some Jews—Kabbalists, Hasidim, and their modern-day heirs—who assert that God is not separate from us at all. In this nondual view, everyone and everything manifests God. For centuries a closely guarded secret of Kabbalah, nondual Judaism is a radical reorientation of religious life that is increasingly influencing mainstream Judaism today.
Writer and scholar Jay Michaelson presents a wide-ranging and compelling explanation of nondual what it is, its traditional and contemporary sources, its historical roots and philosophical significance, how it compares to nondual Buddhism and Hinduism, and how it is lived in practice. He explains what this mystical nondual view means in our daily ego-centered lives, for our communities, and for the future of Judaism.
Writer and scholar Jay Michaelson presents a wide-ranging and compelling explanation of nondual what it is, its traditional and contemporary sources, its historical roots and philosophical significance, how it compares to nondual Buddhism and Hinduism, and how it is lived in practice. He explains what this mystical nondual view means in our daily ego-centered lives, for our communities, and for the future of Judaism.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
75 people are currently reading
421 people want to read
About the author
Jay Michaelson
29 books56 followersRabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, most recently "The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth." He is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and holds a Ph.D in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Dr. Michaelson is also a regular contributor to New York, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, and other publications. His journalistic work primarily focuses on the Supreme Court, religion, law, and sexuality. And he is a senior editor and podcast host at Ten Percent Happier, a meditation startup.
Dr. Michaelson is also a regular contributor to New York, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, and other publications. His journalistic work primarily focuses on the Supreme Court, religion, law, and sexuality. And he is a senior editor and podcast host at Ten Percent Happier, a meditation startup.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 11, 2012
Early in the book, the author poses a startling question: If everything is God, why be Jewish?
A good question, once you’ve accepted the premise of nonduality, which is:
What we call God is simply a name for Existence. If you strip away the layers, at the core of everything you will find Him, It, You, God. Name it what you will, it is simply Being. It is Oneness. It cannot be defined, or delineated, and it definitely cannot be attributed desires, expectations, and moods.
The God we’ve come to know as kind, wise, forgiving, jealous, interested in what we eat and how we treat our neighbors, He is a dual God. He exists in a world only if we exist too, where there is good and evil, up and down, today and tomorrow.
In nondualism, where all of existence is just the pulse of Being, then the entire creation, the entire reality we know, the God that we know — it’s all meaningless. It’s a mirage, it’s a matrix. The only logical and possible choice is to lose the outlines of the self, and melt into the oneness.
And yet, instead of chasing oblivion, our sages have spent centuries arguing over the price of a stolen cow, and then insisted that this cow is the wisdom of God.
The answer is in the Zohar, as the author writes:
"The Zohar can be read as an answer to a deceptively simple question: if everything is God, why does it appear as it does? Thus it begins from the premise of unity and then spends thousands of pages inquiring into multiplicity. How does the relative relate to the absolute? What is the meaning of evil, of distinction, of binaries and pairs? How does the undifferentiated light of the Ein Sof become refracted, as it were, through the prisms of the sefirot and into the many hues we know from our experience? By answering these questions the Zohar rebuilds the world. In this way, the Zohar is able to become the most outrageously anthropomorphic text in the Jewish tradition."
Among Hassidim there is a common quote that for the angels, “God is obvious. Creation is a curiosity.” For humans, “Creation is obvious. God is a curiosity.”
If we flip, and God becomes obvious, then the world loses its reality, and we need to reconstruct it. How is there coffee? Who am I? What am I doing here?
Yet despite this paragraph regarding the Zohar, the author never turns to Judaism as the mechanism of reconstruction. He claims that Judaism as a practice is inherently meaningless, except for cultural and nostalgic resonance. He maintains that there is no practice that could possibly allow for a relationship with the infinite. Any spiritual feeling, or idea, or experience can’t possibly be It, because if you can feel it, or conceive it, it’s not It.
What Hassidism claims is that truly, there is no way to relate to the infinite God, so God designed an elaborate mechanism where that impossibility happens. And that is why no matter how senseless Judaism seems to be, it’s the only sense there is. If God claims that making a blessing over a cup of wine when the clock strikes 6:36 is a better way to relate to him than by meditating on a mountain top, who are we to argue? It’s His matrix.
As an introduction to nonduality and nondual Judaism, this book wonderful. But having brought us to the point of acknowledging that everything is nothing, the author leaves us with nothing. Finding God is only half the journey. Discovering what we’re doing here, where coffee smells like morning and trees sway in the breeze and babies die and children laugh, is just as crucial.
A good question, once you’ve accepted the premise of nonduality, which is:
What we call God is simply a name for Existence. If you strip away the layers, at the core of everything you will find Him, It, You, God. Name it what you will, it is simply Being. It is Oneness. It cannot be defined, or delineated, and it definitely cannot be attributed desires, expectations, and moods.
The God we’ve come to know as kind, wise, forgiving, jealous, interested in what we eat and how we treat our neighbors, He is a dual God. He exists in a world only if we exist too, where there is good and evil, up and down, today and tomorrow.
In nondualism, where all of existence is just the pulse of Being, then the entire creation, the entire reality we know, the God that we know — it’s all meaningless. It’s a mirage, it’s a matrix. The only logical and possible choice is to lose the outlines of the self, and melt into the oneness.
And yet, instead of chasing oblivion, our sages have spent centuries arguing over the price of a stolen cow, and then insisted that this cow is the wisdom of God.
The answer is in the Zohar, as the author writes:
"The Zohar can be read as an answer to a deceptively simple question: if everything is God, why does it appear as it does? Thus it begins from the premise of unity and then spends thousands of pages inquiring into multiplicity. How does the relative relate to the absolute? What is the meaning of evil, of distinction, of binaries and pairs? How does the undifferentiated light of the Ein Sof become refracted, as it were, through the prisms of the sefirot and into the many hues we know from our experience? By answering these questions the Zohar rebuilds the world. In this way, the Zohar is able to become the most outrageously anthropomorphic text in the Jewish tradition."
Among Hassidim there is a common quote that for the angels, “God is obvious. Creation is a curiosity.” For humans, “Creation is obvious. God is a curiosity.”
If we flip, and God becomes obvious, then the world loses its reality, and we need to reconstruct it. How is there coffee? Who am I? What am I doing here?
Yet despite this paragraph regarding the Zohar, the author never turns to Judaism as the mechanism of reconstruction. He claims that Judaism as a practice is inherently meaningless, except for cultural and nostalgic resonance. He maintains that there is no practice that could possibly allow for a relationship with the infinite. Any spiritual feeling, or idea, or experience can’t possibly be It, because if you can feel it, or conceive it, it’s not It.
What Hassidism claims is that truly, there is no way to relate to the infinite God, so God designed an elaborate mechanism where that impossibility happens. And that is why no matter how senseless Judaism seems to be, it’s the only sense there is. If God claims that making a blessing over a cup of wine when the clock strikes 6:36 is a better way to relate to him than by meditating on a mountain top, who are we to argue? It’s His matrix.
As an introduction to nonduality and nondual Judaism, this book wonderful. But having brought us to the point of acknowledging that everything is nothing, the author leaves us with nothing. Finding God is only half the journey. Discovering what we’re doing here, where coffee smells like morning and trees sway in the breeze and babies die and children laugh, is just as crucial.
June 16, 2012
This is such a great and a "meh" book at the same time. The nondual religious perspective will be no surprise to anyone with a background in the practice or study of eastern traditions like Buddhism or Hinduism. I have that background, and I ended up a Jew-by-Choice because at one point my inner sense of a somewhat intercessionary Deity no longer jibed with the God-absent (or at least, intercessionary God-absent) nondual perspective.
From my point of view--which I still hold to be a nondual view, it's entirely possible for everything in the universe--including us--to be part of God. That's the classic nondual perspective that the universe is, basically God's mind and everything and every being is just a solidifying of a small piece God's own conscious awareness. Meaning, we're not the discrete individuals we think we are, but we really all are "echad"--one.
Radical nondualist perspectives like Michaelson's and the more esoteric teachings of Buddhism and Hindusim take that to mean we are absent of any reality, merely the product of external causes and knee-jerk behavioral programming from interacting with other essentially unreal beings. Michaelson finds this a comfort--if everything is God and we don't really exist, then there's no one really to cause or experience pain, and ultimately no one to blame. This can cause a well of compassion for our other, fellow beings to arise, as well as a sense of love for those beings and for God, of which we are all a part.
Michaelson is pretty strident about this. Much like the rock-solid surety about "the way things are" that atheists often profess, Michaelson lays down the law--this is who we are and the way the universe works, and that is that. I always find attitudes like that suspect, and that kind of surety totally undermines Michaelson's arguments for me.
For me, if God is infinite and we are part of God, not only can't we be sure about the nature of God--we can't be sure about the nature of us, either. My sense is that we may be only concretized thoughts of God's, but that we exist that way for a reason, not by accident. There is a thing (a pleasure? a sense of companionship?) experienced by God from reflecting a bit of God-stuff into creating us and letting us think we're separate. It's an easy out to say "we should be good to each other because, how sad, we don't really exist," like Michaelson does. But the other side of that coin is the compassion and love that can flow from supposing that we actually exist for a reason--and maybe we don't know as much as we think we do.
In terms of an easy out, Michaelson's own words betray him here. He labels dual-perspective Judaism (i.e. humans have some reality and God is more than a mere force of nature)a "patronizing allegorization of myth and narrative" (p 143), says that he doesn't "like rules, morals, and oughts," and "can't will [himself] to be compassionate or patient" (p 157.) So much of this book to me seems like Michaelson rationalizing his way around his own personality flaws.
He also misreads Torah while justifying the nondual emotional "ecstasy" that he believes Jewish tradition may really mean by "avodah sh'balev", or service of the heart(p 173). At the time of the writing of the Torah, humans considered thought to reside in the heart, not emotions. This phrase really means intellectual devotion, not emotional devotion, but Michaelson is unaware.
Overall, this is a good introduction to the non-dual perspective. But it's also a closed-minded, overly sure-of-itself take on both Judaism and the nature of God and reality.
My sense is, if given the chance to rewrite this book 10 or 20 years from now, when Michaelson has a better handle on his lack of natural compassion and love for his fellow humans--and perhaps works on those issues in more ways than just meditation retreats, he might write it a bit less self-servingly.
From my point of view--which I still hold to be a nondual view, it's entirely possible for everything in the universe--including us--to be part of God. That's the classic nondual perspective that the universe is, basically God's mind and everything and every being is just a solidifying of a small piece God's own conscious awareness. Meaning, we're not the discrete individuals we think we are, but we really all are "echad"--one.
Radical nondualist perspectives like Michaelson's and the more esoteric teachings of Buddhism and Hindusim take that to mean we are absent of any reality, merely the product of external causes and knee-jerk behavioral programming from interacting with other essentially unreal beings. Michaelson finds this a comfort--if everything is God and we don't really exist, then there's no one really to cause or experience pain, and ultimately no one to blame. This can cause a well of compassion for our other, fellow beings to arise, as well as a sense of love for those beings and for God, of which we are all a part.
Michaelson is pretty strident about this. Much like the rock-solid surety about "the way things are" that atheists often profess, Michaelson lays down the law--this is who we are and the way the universe works, and that is that. I always find attitudes like that suspect, and that kind of surety totally undermines Michaelson's arguments for me.
For me, if God is infinite and we are part of God, not only can't we be sure about the nature of God--we can't be sure about the nature of us, either. My sense is that we may be only concretized thoughts of God's, but that we exist that way for a reason, not by accident. There is a thing (a pleasure? a sense of companionship?) experienced by God from reflecting a bit of God-stuff into creating us and letting us think we're separate. It's an easy out to say "we should be good to each other because, how sad, we don't really exist," like Michaelson does. But the other side of that coin is the compassion and love that can flow from supposing that we actually exist for a reason--and maybe we don't know as much as we think we do.
In terms of an easy out, Michaelson's own words betray him here. He labels dual-perspective Judaism (i.e. humans have some reality and God is more than a mere force of nature)a "patronizing allegorization of myth and narrative" (p 143), says that he doesn't "like rules, morals, and oughts," and "can't will [himself] to be compassionate or patient" (p 157.) So much of this book to me seems like Michaelson rationalizing his way around his own personality flaws.
He also misreads Torah while justifying the nondual emotional "ecstasy" that he believes Jewish tradition may really mean by "avodah sh'balev", or service of the heart(p 173). At the time of the writing of the Torah, humans considered thought to reside in the heart, not emotions. This phrase really means intellectual devotion, not emotional devotion, but Michaelson is unaware.
Overall, this is a good introduction to the non-dual perspective. But it's also a closed-minded, overly sure-of-itself take on both Judaism and the nature of God and reality.
My sense is, if given the chance to rewrite this book 10 or 20 years from now, when Michaelson has a better handle on his lack of natural compassion and love for his fellow humans--and perhaps works on those issues in more ways than just meditation retreats, he might write it a bit less self-servingly.
January 2, 2016
One of the most amazing books about nondual/neo-Hasidic judiasm I've ever read. If you know nothing about this ancient strain of Jewish thought, this book will blow your mind; if you're familiar with these ideas, it is a wonderfully written summation of the non-dualist philosophy and how it can inform, revolutionize, and imbue traditional Jewish practice.
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I just re-read this book in one sitting on the first day of 2016 as a reminder of how deep are the truths contained within. It's always good to come back to books we've read before. I originally made my way through this in 2010, but, 6 years later, it's amazing to see how many other things I've read---contemplative Christian practice, Thomas Merton, neo-Hasidism, the via negativa of Maimonides---are contained herein. In some ways, the book's subtitle, with its word "radical" is really inaccurate. The views Michaelson is sharing here might be radical vis a vis our contemporary culture---but these threads within Judaism are ancient and found within some of the tradition's most "conservative" sources. The brilliance of Michaelson, and I suppose this is the brilliance of neo-Hasidism in general, is in separating the fundamental non-dualism at the heart of Kabbalah and jewish mysticism from some of its, shall I say, less attractive historical/ethnic/gender philosophies.
-----
I just re-read this book in one sitting on the first day of 2016 as a reminder of how deep are the truths contained within. It's always good to come back to books we've read before. I originally made my way through this in 2010, but, 6 years later, it's amazing to see how many other things I've read---contemplative Christian practice, Thomas Merton, neo-Hasidism, the via negativa of Maimonides---are contained herein. In some ways, the book's subtitle, with its word "radical" is really inaccurate. The views Michaelson is sharing here might be radical vis a vis our contemporary culture---but these threads within Judaism are ancient and found within some of the tradition's most "conservative" sources. The brilliance of Michaelson, and I suppose this is the brilliance of neo-Hasidism in general, is in separating the fundamental non-dualism at the heart of Kabbalah and jewish mysticism from some of its, shall I say, less attractive historical/ethnic/gender philosophies.
December 16, 2024
I've always had a bit of trouble with the concept of/word god. I was pretty young when I stopped thinking there was a giant, bearded white dude in the sky who controlled everything. But there was always something that tripped me up—the concept of forever. The fact that there was always a “before” and there will never be an end, really messed me up. Then, after going to a Buddhist inspired school, reading a little bit of Spinoza, and having a meditation experience where I saw everything as one, I began to have a concept of what the word god could mean to me. I still don't like the word, and I substitute “forever” or “everything” or “nature” for it whenever I can, but it makes a lot more (and less) sense to me now. The introduction describes it well: “'God' is a mask, a way of speaking about the world: of naming it … 'god' is the name we give to the oneness of it all.”
Everything is God helped me along this path, not only by talking about god in a way I can relate to, but also by tying to it Judaism. The concept that most resonated with me (and which I'll probably butcher) is “transcending and including.” I'll quote from the book (quoting other sources) again: “in the beginning, mountains are mountains. During zazen, mountains are not mountains. Afterwards, mountains are once again mountains” but, at this stage, they are “both: both everything and nothing, both existent and nonexistent.” Michaelson then ties it into Judaism, specifically the star of David: “The downward pointing triangle represents the 'first stage,' the world of ordinary experience, in which there is self and other, figure and ground.... The upward point triangle represents the “second stage” of unitary consciousness, in which there is no self, no other, no figure, and only the one Ground of Being.... The star together is the third stage of nonduality: both-and and neither-nor.”
This intriguing concept is introduced in the first nine pages of the book, but it sets the stage. The rest of the book is Michaelson talking a lot more about this, and also giving context to nondual Judaism by talking about nondualism, Judaism, nondual Judaism, nondual Judaism, and the parts of other religions that contain nondualism. At times Everything is God gets very heady and dense, and at other times it offers us practical ways to try and reach a state of “both-and and neither-nor.”
Everything is God helped me along this path, not only by talking about god in a way I can relate to, but also by tying to it Judaism. The concept that most resonated with me (and which I'll probably butcher) is “transcending and including.” I'll quote from the book (quoting other sources) again: “in the beginning, mountains are mountains. During zazen, mountains are not mountains. Afterwards, mountains are once again mountains” but, at this stage, they are “both: both everything and nothing, both existent and nonexistent.” Michaelson then ties it into Judaism, specifically the star of David: “The downward pointing triangle represents the 'first stage,' the world of ordinary experience, in which there is self and other, figure and ground.... The upward point triangle represents the “second stage” of unitary consciousness, in which there is no self, no other, no figure, and only the one Ground of Being.... The star together is the third stage of nonduality: both-and and neither-nor.”
This intriguing concept is introduced in the first nine pages of the book, but it sets the stage. The rest of the book is Michaelson talking a lot more about this, and also giving context to nondual Judaism by talking about nondualism, Judaism, nondual Judaism, nondual Judaism, and the parts of other religions that contain nondualism. At times Everything is God gets very heady and dense, and at other times it offers us practical ways to try and reach a state of “both-and and neither-nor.”
December 11, 2018
Writing about non-duality is akin to giving a speech about the power of silence. To do either well requires a rare blend of eloquence, experience, imagination and patience. Ivan Illich managed to speak about the power of silence in just this way, which is transcribed and published in his excellent book In the Mirror of the Past: Lec. Michaelson writes about non-duality with equal deft.
"Everything is God" beautifully spans a distance between scholarship and personal journey. Michaelson writes from a point of view that triangulates an academic institution, a temple and a meditation mat. Based only on his ability to articulate the unspeakable ground of being known to non-dualists as God, Michaelson's book is a great accomplishment. In a world where passionate allegiances to various personal Gods are dividing cultures and peddling absolutes, non-dualism is a welcome reinterpretation of every religious tradition.
But there is much more to this book. Michaelson acknowledges that a non-dual God is difficult to embrace, both intellectually and emotionally. The Ground of All Being That Stands Outside of Time and Space is not the kind of lover that you bring home to meet the parents, or that inspires poetry and passion. This is where Judaism comes in. A "practicing non-dualist" must confront the paradox of a human desire to connect with the Other, and the understanding that Other is ultimately a ruse, an illusion.
For the non-dualist, the personal God found in religions is simply a useful tool, something to hang one's devotional hat on. Michaelson's use of Judaism in this respect has nothing to do with Judaism representing any absolute Truth. It is a matter of going to the closet and wearing the shirt that's there. He is Jewish and grew up in Jewish culture. He knows its traditions. Why not use it as a way of channeling the passion and awe that awareness of God brings?
He adopts those Jewish traditions, though, with lightness and even humor:
Michaelson has given voice to nondualism as a system of thought, and has brought that ineffable realm into the muck and clang of life, into our dualist perceptions, even into the temples, chapels, synagogues and other centers of daily religious pomp and circumstance. None of those religious centers is special or closer to Truth. Nonduality is an equal opportunity transformative awareness. The specifics of the journey toward that awareness are simply matters of preference.
I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because he spends a significant portion of the book reviewing the various "brands" of nondualistic thought and practice, from Buddhist to Hindu to American Beat. However, I think that one of the most unique and internally consistent explications of a nondualistic metaphysics is laid out in A Course in Miracles. It is unfortunate that it is not included in this or other books that review nondualistic writings and thought. While the Christian-based language of The Course likely puts off many, the text has virtually nothing to do with Christianity, and in fact would be considered quite heretical to most practicing Christians (or at least to those who could understand it at all).
I suspect it is not included in Michaelson's review because he is not familiar with the text. If so, then its exclusion is doubly unfortunate.
I highly recommend "Everything Is God" to anyone with an interest in nondualistic thought. Those who are not Jewish should not be put off by the "Judaism" in the title. I have only a passing understanding of Judaism, personally, and found Michaelson's review of Jewish thought to be fascinating and very informative. The reader comes away from this text with a deeper understanding of both the theory and the practice of nondualism, and I think more importantly with a new understanding of God, whatever that term may mean to the reader.
"Everything is God" beautifully spans a distance between scholarship and personal journey. Michaelson writes from a point of view that triangulates an academic institution, a temple and a meditation mat. Based only on his ability to articulate the unspeakable ground of being known to non-dualists as God, Michaelson's book is a great accomplishment. In a world where passionate allegiances to various personal Gods are dividing cultures and peddling absolutes, non-dualism is a welcome reinterpretation of every religious tradition.
But there is much more to this book. Michaelson acknowledges that a non-dual God is difficult to embrace, both intellectually and emotionally. The Ground of All Being That Stands Outside of Time and Space is not the kind of lover that you bring home to meet the parents, or that inspires poetry and passion. This is where Judaism comes in. A "practicing non-dualist" must confront the paradox of a human desire to connect with the Other, and the understanding that Other is ultimately a ruse, an illusion.
For the non-dualist, the personal God found in religions is simply a useful tool, something to hang one's devotional hat on. Michaelson's use of Judaism in this respect has nothing to do with Judaism representing any absolute Truth. It is a matter of going to the closet and wearing the shirt that's there. He is Jewish and grew up in Jewish culture. He knows its traditions. Why not use it as a way of channeling the passion and awe that awareness of God brings?
He adopts those Jewish traditions, though, with lightness and even humor:
[M]y own religious path has many traditional elements in it. I still keep Shabbat in the halachic way, still am so shomer kashrut that I won't eat most foods in a nonkosher restaurant. But I see these ritual practices as acts of love. I abstain from bacon not because I am afraid of punishment, not because I think it unhealthy, and not because it is part of the folkways of my people. I do it because I love God, and when you love someone, you do stupid things for them. There is nothing essentially sensible about bringing your lover flowers. So I don't mind that avoiding bacon makes no sense either.
Michaelson has given voice to nondualism as a system of thought, and has brought that ineffable realm into the muck and clang of life, into our dualist perceptions, even into the temples, chapels, synagogues and other centers of daily religious pomp and circumstance. None of those religious centers is special or closer to Truth. Nonduality is an equal opportunity transformative awareness. The specifics of the journey toward that awareness are simply matters of preference.
I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because he spends a significant portion of the book reviewing the various "brands" of nondualistic thought and practice, from Buddhist to Hindu to American Beat. However, I think that one of the most unique and internally consistent explications of a nondualistic metaphysics is laid out in A Course in Miracles. It is unfortunate that it is not included in this or other books that review nondualistic writings and thought. While the Christian-based language of The Course likely puts off many, the text has virtually nothing to do with Christianity, and in fact would be considered quite heretical to most practicing Christians (or at least to those who could understand it at all).
I suspect it is not included in Michaelson's review because he is not familiar with the text. If so, then its exclusion is doubly unfortunate.
I highly recommend "Everything Is God" to anyone with an interest in nondualistic thought. Those who are not Jewish should not be put off by the "Judaism" in the title. I have only a passing understanding of Judaism, personally, and found Michaelson's review of Jewish thought to be fascinating and very informative. The reader comes away from this text with a deeper understanding of both the theory and the practice of nondualism, and I think more importantly with a new understanding of God, whatever that term may mean to the reader.
June 1, 2018
I came into this knowing only the basics about nondualism and very little about Jewish theology, and I found it all really fascinating. The writing is pretty clear for a topic that easily ventures into the hopelessly vague, drawing explicitly on sources from inside and outside of Judaism. I definitely want to put some more thought into some of the practice he describes.
January 13, 2024
Disappointed by his uncritical deployment of "Israel" throughout the text, while mentioning Palestine only once in a thoroughly distasteful hypothetical example. Upon looking into his recent writings, I find the writer to be a typical liberal Zionist and apologist for the past and present genocide of Palestinians. While the ideas that I've encountered so far in the book are interesting, I persist in reading solely for any additional philosophical sources that might be less reliant on fascist ideology.
December 10, 2019
Nice job introducing the convo of non-duality to Judaism and vice versa. Gets a little lost on non-duality himself and doesn’t end up making the most convincing case or read. Good collection of sources and saying from Kabbalists and Chasidic masters. I appreciated this work.
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July 28, 2019Did not finish. The concept of self is something that's very important to me.
April 8, 2024
genuinely could’ve been half as long
May 24, 2024
Fascinating-- reasonably clear and helpful, both in theory & practice. They should have taught me this stuff in Hebrew school.
July 18, 2025
I read this for a Torah Study book club. I just couldn't get into it. The other participating members liked it better than I did.
March 18, 2017
I feel the passion and the brilliance but I do not feel the warmth and the affection. My own "personal" relationship with the Divine is based upon more than mere intellectual appreciation, so although I find the writing and the train of thought to be compelling, I also find it to be chilly. Might try again to finish it, but....
October 2, 2009
Review of the book appeared in the Forward, Erev Sukkot, 2 October 2009. The book comes out in pb on 13 Oct (Amazon.com, $12.78)
December 21, 2012
Ayn od milvado.
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