The Book of Words: Talking Spiritual Life, Living Spiritual Talk
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"According to the Hebrew Bible, God made the world with words. God just spoke and the world became reality. (The Aramaic for 'I create as I speak' is avara k’davara, or in magician’s language, abracadabra.) . . . This does not protect words from the numbing effects of overuse in any religious tradition. . . . We need to dust off the words, shake away the accretions, wonder again about what they originally might have meant and enable ourselves to live in the word."
—from the Introduction
With creativity and poetry (and occasional heresy) Kushner dusts off thirty classical Hebrew words, shakes them free of the effects of generations of overuse, “re-translates” them, and liberates their ancient holy power. The result is a contemporary spiritual guide for your personal religious life.
According to the Hebrew Bible, God made the world with words. God just spoke and the world came into being. Words therefore are not merely sounds signifying something else; they are instruments of creation, primary reality itself. They need only to be read, spoken, and interpreted. And to know them is to know reality itself.
Kushner has designed the book himself, seamlessly blending graphics and content. In doing so he evokes the aesthetics of an ancient manuscript and a vision of our power to shape the future.
Each finely crafted chapter begins with a Hebrew word and Kushner’s provocative English translation. At the bottom of the page is a transliteration of the Hebrew along with its more customary English rendering. In addition to his own intriguing definition, he includes a biblical citation anchoring the word, along with a more recent text showing the word’s evolution. Finally, we are offered a personal, meditative exercise designed to enable you to “live in the word.”
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is one of the most widely read authors by people of all faiths on Jewish spiritual life. He is the best-selling author of such books as Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary; God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning; Honey from the Rock: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism; The Book of Letters: A Mystical Hebrew Alphabet; The Book of Miracles: A Young Person's Guide to Jewish Spiritual Awareness; The Book of Words: Talking Spiritual Life, Living Spiritual Talk; Eyes Remade for Wonder: A Lawrence Kushner Reader; I'm God, You're Not: Observations on Organized Religion and other Disguises of the Ego; Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians; The River of Light: Jewish Mystical Awareness; The Way Into Jewish Mystical Tradition; and co-author of Because Nothing Looks Like God; How Does God Make Things Happen?; Where Is God?; What Does God Look Like?; and In God's Hands. He is the Emanu-El Scholar at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El and an adjunct professor of Jewish mysticism and spirituality at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is available to speak on the following topics: • Jewish Mystical Imagination • Rymanover's Silent Aleph: What Really Happened on Sinai • Zohar on Romance and Revelation • What Makes Kabbalah Kabbalah • Sacred Stories of the Ordinary: When God Makes a Surprise Appearance in Everyday Life Click here to contact the author.
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Reviews for The Book of Words
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A rather idiosyncratic collection of definitions for some of the most common terms in Judaism. Some of the ideas I agree with, others I am more dubious about (and unfortunately, he is dead wrong in one place -- there are people out there who do evil deeds on purpose), but Kushner writes in a very clear, engaging style and all his short essays are good food for thought.
Book preview
The Book of Words - Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
INTRODUCTION
According to the Hebrew Bible, God made the world with words. God just spoke and the world became reality. (The Aramaic for I create as I speak
is avara k’davara, or, in magician’s language, abracadabra.) Not only are words the instrument of creation, in Judaism they are primary reality itself.
We ordinarily think of words as signifiers—a few syllables which denote something really real. But in Hebrew the word for word, davar, also means thing.
The word does not need to be made real, it already is. It needs only to be read, spoken, and interpreted. To know the word therefore is to know reality itself.
This, of course, does not protect words from the numbing effects of overuse in any religious tradition. Spoken too often, even the holiest reality begins to sound hollow and loses its ability to create anew. Indeed, some of our most sacred words have come to feel like sawdust in our mouths, no longer able to instruct, inspire, chasten, or nurture. We need to dust them off, shake away the accretions, and wonder again about what they originally might have meant.
The following chapters offer my occasionally unconventional definitions
of thirty classical Hebrew words, words that describe the spiritual dimension of life, whatever one’s faith. Taken together they describe much of Judaism’s spiritual spectrum. The definitions do not pretend to be complete, or even lexicographically accurate. Instead, they hopefully offer a way back to the spiritual reality of the words themselves.
Each chapter of The Book of Words begins with a Hebrew word and my own English translation. At the bottom of the same page, in smaller type, is a transliteration of the Hebrew along with its more customary English rendering. The transliteration scheme is my best attempt to help the non-Hebrew reader to accurately pronounce each word. In addition to my own definition-essay, each chapter also includes both a biblical citation to anchor the word and a passage from a more recent text indicating the word’s growth. Finally, the chapter concludes with a kavanah, or personal, meditative exercise designed to enable the reader to live in the word.
Bibliographical sources are listed by phrase and page in a separate section at the end of the book.
The whole world is full of God. (Isaiah 6:3)
But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day. (Deuteronomy 4:4)
Being at One with the Holy One of Being is not about becoming the same as God, but about forgetting the boundaries of self. You now realize who you have been all along. You forget, at least for a moment, the mind game of where you end and Creation begins. You understand that you are an expression of Creation: it is in you and you are everywhere in it.
There are many ways we reach for the Holy One (ness). We can attain self-transcendence through our mind in study, through our heart in prayer, or with our hands in sacred deed. We say, in effect, that through becoming God’s agent, through voluntarily setting God’s will above our own, we literally lose our selves and become One with the One whom we serve. It rarely lasts for more than a moment.
The primary obstacle to becoming one is self-awareness, self-consciousness, talking to oneself. And for this reason, high awareness involves stopping, ignoring, forgetting the conversation we routinely carry on inside our heads between different parts of our personalities. Such amnesia is another word for self-unification.
When the one who asks and the one who hears are the same, we are who we are. We realize, to our embarrassment, that we have been ourselves all along and only linguistic convention tricked us into thinking that we were someone else. In thinking, praying, and doing what God wants, we become one with God and the Universe. The outer person is an illusion, a figment of language. Only an un-self-awareness remains.
(d’vey•koot’) Unio Mystica
MICHEL OF ZLOCZOV
They would be attached to Him with cleaving, desire and wish. And they would consider themselves to be nothing, understanding that truly without the power of the Creator, blessed be God’s Name, who created them and who keeps them in existence, they are nothing just as before the creation; consequently there is nothing in the world but the Creator, the Holy One of Blessing.
Living Spiritual Talk
K A V A N A H
Since the primary obstacle to self-transcendence is an involuntary attitude or mind set, some trick or method of outwitting your normal way of thinking will be necessary.
Do anything with such intensity that you do not realize, until you are finished, that it was you who was doing it. But, of course, this suggestion itself only creates a mental obstacle to its stated goal. For this reason, disregard all advice. Try
to do nothing. Whenever you can, be
a servant of the Nameless One. And if all this fails, then perform some religious act, over and over again, until it becomes almost a mime. In this way, even habituation can be pressed into the service of holiness.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life that you and your offspring should live by loving the Lord your God, heeding God’s commands and holding fast to God.
(Deuteronomy 30:19)
Blessings give reverent and routine voice to our conviction that life is good, one blessing after another. Even, and especially, when life is cold and dark. Indeed to offer blessings at such times may be our only deliverance.
We have specific and unique phrases by which we bless a sacred book