Book Review: Daniel C. Matt's "The Essential Kabbalah"

Daniel C. Matt’s “The Essential Kabbalah” is an incredibly valuable book of spirituality, and it deserves a wide readership. Unfortunately, I doubt that many readers will find it accessible, but more on that in a moment.

The book consists almost entirely of passages taken from kabbalist texts. These passages have been selected, translated, and edited by Matt, and Matt has provided extensive notes on the passages at the end of the book. (There is also an introduction, which I will discuss below.) Students of kabbalah will recognize many of the kabbalist texts that Matt cites, but some of the texts may be new to them; I certainly learned a few new names. At any rate, the passages run the historical gamut of kabbalah: one will find citations from texts and authors such as the Bahir, the Zohar, Azriel of Gerona, Nahmanides, Joseph Gikatilla, Abraham Abulafia, Isaac of Akko, Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria, Hayyim Vital, the Great Maggid, and even Rav Kook. These texts and authors represent some eight hundred years of thinking about kabbalah, and Matt has not only translated them beautifully – truly, this book contains some of the finest poetry I have read – but he has also woven them together into a seamless tapestry. Open the book at random, and there is a good chance that the passage(s) on the left page and the passage(s) on the right page are taken from texts that were composed centuries apart. And here is where the problems begin.

Readers who are familiar with kabbalah will recognize that the passages in Matt’s book come from texts that were written in different times and that have different views about the nature of kabbalah. However, readers who are new to kabbalah might not see this, and so they may be tempted to view kabbalists like Abraham Abulafia and Hayyim Vital as being birds of the same flock, which they most certainly are not. Thus, important differences in both theory and practice between texts may be lost on the reader who is new to kabbalah. More pressingly, such a reader will almost certainly be overwhelmed and confused by many passages which contain references to esoteric kabbalist concepts and practices. Matt provides a short introductory chapter on kabbalah, and he sketches some of the basic concepts and major historical developments therein, but I doubt that this chapter will be helpful to many readers. Kabbalah is simply too complicated to explain in twentysome pages. The notes at the end of the book supplement the introduction nicely, but again I fear that the subject of kabbalah is simply too vast for a beginner. Despite Matt’s notes, which are generally excellent, readers who are new to kabbalah will almost certainly be confused by references to the sefirot, theurgy, and ecstatic practices involving the divine names. Indeed, neither the primary texts that Matt cites nor Matt’s own notes provide much explanation of theurgy – surely one of the most important concepts of the tradition represented by the Zohar – or Luria’s account of creation. (The latter is crucial to Luria’s understanding of tikkun olam, itself a theurgical concept, and a very influential one too.) Readers who are familiar with kabbalah will find Matt’s book to be a precious gem. But readers who haven’t been previously exposed to kabbalah will almost certainly be lost and confused.

I don’t blame Matt for the difficulty that many readers will have with the book. Again, given the nature of kabbalah, such difficulty can scarcely be avoided. I suppose that Matt could have decided to write an introduction to kabbalah for the general reader instead, but others have already done this, and there is great need for a book such as Matt’s. Few historically important works of kabbalah have been translated in full, and those that have been translated are often long and difficult. Thus, it is incredibly valuable to have an anthology of kabbalist writings that represents kabbalists from every major tradition. Matt’s “The Essential Kabbalah” is such a book, and those who have the necessary background should find it rewarding. Indeed, I was quite amazed by the book, and I plan to re-read it again and the again in the future. I have been meditating on two passages from the book the last few days, and by God’s grace this has already brought me both wisdom and peace. Here are the passages:

Think of yourself as Ayin [i.e., nothingness] and forget yourself totally. Then you can transcend time, rising to the world of thought, where all is equal: life and death, ocean and dry land. Such is not the case if you are attached to the material status of this world. If you think of yourself as something, then God cannot clothe himself in you, for God is infinite. No vessel can contain God, unless you think of yourself as Ayin.

The essence of serving God and of all the mitsvot [i.e., commandments] is to attain the state of humility, that is, to understand that all your physical and mental powers and your essential being depend on the divine elements within. You are simply a channel for the divine attributes. You attain the humility through the awe of God’s vastness, through realizing that “there is no place empty of it.” Then you come to the state of Ayin, the state of humility. You have no independent self and are contained in the Creator. This is the meaning of the verse: “Moses hid his face, for he was in awe.” Through his experience of awe, Moses attained the hiding of his face, that is, he perceived no independent self. Everything was part of divinity.”

These passages are rich in wisdom, beauty, and truth. And they require no advanced knowledge of kabbalah or even Judaism, though many other passages in the book do require such knowledge. (Incidentally, the first passage was taken from Dov Baer, the Great Maggid, while the second passage was taken from Issachar Baer of Zlotshov.)

Matt’s book contains some of the greatest spiritual wisdom of kabbalah, and I believe that readers who study the book carefully and meditate upon it will likely grow in their relationship with God. Readers who are not familiar with kabbalah but who are interested in tackling Matt’s book are strongly advised to acquire the relevant background. As regards particular recommendations, I would suggest the following titles: the introductions to Judaism by Norman Solomon, Michael Fishbane, Christine Hayes, David Gelernter, and Wayne Dosick; the abridged Talmud editions by Norman Solomon and Ben Zion Bokser; Adin Steinsaltz’s “Essential Talmud” and perhaps Abraham Cohen’s “Everyman’s Talmud”; and, finally, Joseph Dan’s “Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction,” Gershom Scholem’s “Kabbalah” and “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,” Daniel Matt’s abridged Zohar (published by Paulist Press), Moshe Idel’s “Kabbalah: New Perspectives,” and Adin Steinsaltz’s “The Thirteen Petalled Rose” (in that order). And, of course, one should be familiar with the Hebrew Bible and thinkers like Rashi and Maimonides (see, e.g., Benjamin Sommer’s “Jewish Conceptions of Scripture”). There’s really no other way to learn kabbalah. 

Finally, I should mention that I have a few complaints about Matt’s introduction (e.g., his dating of the Sefir Yezirah and his assertion that the centrality of numbers in Jewish mysticism was heavily influenced by Pythagorean mysticism), but most of these are quibbles. However, three issues are more serious. First, on the bottom of page 8, Matt writes “From a more radical perspective, evil originates in divine thought, which eliminates waste before emanating goodness. The demonic is rooted in the divine.” My complaint is this: while Matt’s description is accurate where Lurianic kabbalah is concerned, I’m not sure that such a view was held before Luria or that it circulated widely outside of the most dedicated circles of Lurianic kabbalists. Thus, as far as I know, the view is a decidedly minority opinion, something which Matt should have made clear but did not. Also, Matt refrains from explaining how Luria conceived the divine origin of evil, and so his description is exceedingly vague. Second, on page 11 Matt’s language suggests that psychological interpretations of the sefirot were common in kabbalah, but Idel (“Kabbalah: New Perspectives”) suggests that such interpretations were not popular before the rise of Hasidism. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Matt fails to clarify the widely divergent ways in which kabbalists understood the sefirot. (Again, see Idel, “Kabbalah: New Perspectives.”)