Reddit reviews Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide

I don't, but I have a book on it. Aptly titled Jewish Meditation by Aryeh Kaplan.

Jewish Meditation sounds like what you're looking for!

Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism, so it’s certainly going to have a place in Judaism. Some of the great Jewish theorists like Nachmanides, Joseph Karo, the Vilna Gaon, etc. were all Kabbalists. Hasidism is a Kabbalistic movement, so every Hasidic Jew partakes in a Kabbalistic philosophy. The prominent Chabad movement is a Hasidic movement and thus partakes in Kabbalah. Hasidism was resisted by the Mitnagdim, but they were also Kabbalists (like the aforementioned Vilna Gaon). I don’t know any rabbis who teach transcendental meditation, but devekut is a Jewish concept. Additionally, the popular Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has authored Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide.

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Edit:

Forgot to mention that there are also Jews who are fully traditional and fully reject Kabbalah.

These are popular:

Jewish Literacy

Jewish Meditation

Also, many books by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Try this
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0805210377/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473133471&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=Jewish+meditation&dpPl=1&dpID=41DhIahkWLL&ref=plSrch

I was curious about this myself about a year ago and did some reading. turns out the ancient Jews were into meditation as well, but their practice differed from the typical eastern meditation practices.

Eastern Meditation is usually performed as a means to an end, or done for the experience itself. The Jewish practice didn't use meditation for the experience in itself, but rather to quiet and focus the mind for prayer. I highly recommend this book for a in-depth look at this history and techniques of Jewish Meditation and how it differs from the eastern practices: https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Meditation-Practical-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0805210377

I've begun to incorporate aspects of the jewish meditation practice (within my own christian context) into my own prayer life. I haven't become regular at it yet, but for someone who is very easily detracted while praying, I can tell you it does work wonders for keeping focused during prayer. Also, I do believe there are emotional and psychological benefits to regular practice, and I hope to become more regular.

There are other takes on Jewish meditation as well, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan has some great starter books explaining the concept. Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide & Meditation and Kabbalah

> While I certainly agree that there is value in looking at things in a new light to see a new truth, all too often people do not actually read the actual source material and instead read modern interpretations which are fallacious, and misleading.

Sounds like we'd get along. :)

In the Jewish tradition many English speaking practitioners happily accepted Michael Berg's translation of The Zohar as being canonical.

Luckily a scholar with more of an academic eye grounded in Aramaic named Daniel Matt was willing to spend the better part of a decade trying to capture the nuanced almost poetical nature of the texts for an English audience.

This gets to a point that I think Jorge Luis Borges perfectly described in his short story 'An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain' and 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'.

The first short explores the idea that the same book may tell many stories or that there is only one story iterated infinitely as a sort of synecdoche. The second portrays how translations are in many ways whole new works that never fully capture the original's essence, somewhat similar to Godel's incompleteness theorem.

To illustrate this look at a single simple Hebrew word that has shaped the better part of the last 2000 years of Western civilization: יֵשׁוּעַ. Most westerners think the correct pronunciation of this word is Jesus. Yeshua is far closer to the truth, but even then it doesn't entirely capture the full Hebrew vocalization on the vowels/nikkud.

How did this happen? The name Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) comes from Joshua's Hebrew name, Yehoshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) which sometimes appears in its shortened form, Yeshua (e.g., 1 Chron. 24:11; Neh. 8:17). Yeshua, when transliterated into Greek, comes out as ᾽Ιησοῦς (pronounced YAY-soos), with the final sigma being necessary in the nominative case to designate a proper name. In old English, the "y" sound was rendered as "j," and thus we obtain "Jesus".

Put another way all interpretations and translations are necessarily corruptions.


> As an aside I have not read much re; Kabbalah, do you have a recommendation of a good book?

The tradition spans everything from neoplatonism, gnosticism, hermetica, to pythagorean mysticism. It wouldn't be exaggerating to say Kabbalah is the thread that ties together almost all of western esotericism.

There are a number of popular documentaries that give a general overview without being too inaccurate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibuSPtXG5dg

Rav. Michael Laitman's protege, Anthony Kosinec, does a nice job as well,

http://www.kabbalah.info/engkab/kabbalah-video-clips/kabbalah-revealed-a-basic-overview

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan does a stellar job summarizing the traditional Jewish take on Kabbalah in his 1991 book "Inner Space." The book doesn't convey the feeling, however, of what it means to be really "in" the tradition.

The closest thing I think I can share to give a sense of what I'm getting at is this little paper.

Other than that though unless a person has any experience with lucid dreaming or out of body experiences, I am not sure anything I say will make any sense. Kaplan wrote two books, "Jewish Meditation, A Practical Guide" and "Meditation and the Bible", with the hopes that others could have the same sorts of lived experiences. Like anything, though, it requires a little practice. :)

If you want to learn about Jewish mysticism, I've heard this is an awesome book:
http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Meditation-Practical-Aryeh-Kaplan/dp/0805210377/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1319601342&sr=8-10

http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Meditation-A-Practical-Guide/dp/0805210377