The Book of Brilliance: Selections from Sefer ha-Bahir
To read Sefer ha-Bahir, "The Book of Brilliance," is to discover where Kabbalah began. Gershom Scholem, the dean of modern Jewish mystical studies, has said that the Bahir is "...assuredly one of the most astonishing, not to say incredible, books in the Hebrew literature of the Middle Ages." In ways unlike any Hebrew text before it, it brims with innovative imagery, opaque language, and what Daniel Abrams calls a "hermeneutic self-confidence." It set a new standard for mystical rhetoric and speculation. There are more well-known works of Kabbalah -- the Zohar, the teachings of Isaac Luria, Hasidic literature - but all these emanate, at least in part, from this radiant book.
Collected in this volume are selections from the Sefer ha-Bahir that have been translated, annotated, and interpreted by renowned author and scholar Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis, the author of the celebrated Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, & Monsters. This book is intended to be a primer, an introduction and guide to the world of Jewish mysticism and spiritual thought. Easy to read and digest, with deep layers of meaning just waiting to be pulled back and explored.
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