E. J. Brill, according to Wikipedia, is "a Dutch international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, Netherlands. With offices in Leiden, Boston, Paderborn and Singapore, Brill today publishes 275 journals and around 1200 new books and reference works each year." I've known its hefty, … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – The Alien Eyes
(This is the fifth and final post of a series. To begin the series, click here.) "Oh--oh, the eyes are there. Always the eyes are there. ... Only the eyes are talking to me. I--I--I--I don't understand that. Oh--the eyes don't have a body. They're just eyes ... not connected to a body. … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – The Eyes of Terror
(This post is the fourth of a series. To begin the series, click here.) Imagine: we're Jewish mystics of the sort that Gershom Scholem called the "merkabah mystics"--fascinated, or maybe obsessed, with the divine Chariot (merkabah) that's described in the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – How Real Is “Real”?
(This is the second post in a series. For the first post, click here.) "Now, friend, return to the study of the descent to the merkabah. I have been instructing you in it: how one goes down and how one comes up; what the character of the First Palace is; how one gets angels into his service and … [Read more...]
The Mystery of the Merkabah – “What Was That Paradise?”
Sometime around the beginning of the 11th century, an Iraqi Jewish academician named Hai Gaon had to field a query from a puzzled reader of the Talmud: "With respect to that which our rabbis taught, 'Four entered Paradise, Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, the "Other One" and Rabbi Akiba'--what was that … [Read more...]
