How do we articulate a religious vision that embraces evolution and human authorship of Scripture? Drawing on the Jewish mystical traditions of Kabbalah and Hasidism, path-breaking Jewish scholar Arthur Green argues that a neomystical perspective can help us to reframe these realities, so they may yet be viewed as dwelling places of the sacred. In doing so, he rethinks such concepts as God, the origins and meaning of existence, human nature, and revelation to construct a new Judaism for the twenty-first century.

God and the Ways of Being --The Secret of the Sh'ma --God Above, God Within --The Two and the One --God as Y-H-W-H: "Is-was-will be" is one! --Speak my Name --Seeking God: Look First to Love --In God's Own Image: Seek My Face --Face to Face --Male and Female: An Excursus --One and Two --Creation --One God, two Ways --Creation and the Jewish Question --Creation and the Struggle for Faith --What Comes "First"? --Two Tales --The One and the Many --Who is at the Center? --Evolution: An Ongoing Process --From Aggadah to Halakhah --The First Mitzvah: Be Aware --In God's Image --Celebrating Creation: The Mitzvah of Shabbat --"To Work it and Guard it": Preserving God's World --Vegetarianism: A Kashrut for Our Age --Human Love and Human Pain --The Human Being: Bearer of Divine Compassion --Revelation --Y-H-W-H and Language --Before the Mountain --Human Understanding and Divine Speech --The Inner Mountain --Torah as the Name of God --Revelation and the Inward Journey --The Role of Covenant: A Reinterpretation --Revelation and Torah --Revelation, Will, and Law --The Personal Path: Accepting the Yoke --Sinai and Language --Sinai and Study --Sinai and Community --The Three Festivals: Sinai and the Sacred Cycle --The Word in Our Day --Redemption --The Light of the First Day --Crying Out for the Light --Redemption as Coming Home --The Bible: A Tale of Exile --Homecoming and Teshuvah --Teshuvah and the Sacred Year --The Redemptive Task: Getting to Work.

Keter is a close reading of fifty relatively brief Jewish texts, tracing the motif of divine coronation from Jewish esoteric writings of late antiquity to the Zohar, written in thirteenth-century Spain. In the course of this investigation Arthur Green draws a wide arc including Talmudic, Midrashic, liturgical, Merkavah, German Hasidic, and Kabbalistic works, showing through this single theme the spectrum of devotional, mystical, and magical views held by various circles of Jews over the course of a millennium or more. The first portion of the work deals with late antiquity, emphasizing the close relationship between texts of what is often depicted as "normative" Judaism and their mystical/magical analogues. The mythic imagination of ancient Judaism, he suggests, is shared across this spectrum. The latter portion of the work turns to the medieval Jews who inherited this ancient tradition and its evolution into Kabbalah, where keter plays a key role as the first of the ten divine emanations or sefirot.The nature of these sefirot as symbols and the emergence of a structured and hierarchical symbolism out of the mythic imagery of the past are key themes in these later chapters. As a whole, Keter takes the reader on an exciting tour of the interior landscapes of the Jewish imagination, offering some remarkable insights into the nature of mystical and symbolic thinking in the Jewish tradition.Originally published in 1997.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.