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Novel takes a page from the Book of Love
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Reviewed by LILA HANFT, Staff Reporter
Kabbalah: A Love Story. By Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. Morgan Road Books. New York. 2006. 196 pp. $17.95.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, the well-respected thinker, writer and teacher, is the author of more than a dozen books about Jewish mysticism. However he is sometimes confused with Conservative rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-selling When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
“It happens all the time,” Lawrence Kushner admitted in a 1999 interview. “After a lecture, somebody will come up to me and say, ‘Rabbi Kushner, your books have changed my life.' Then they produce a copy of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Š It keeps me humble.”
The main characters in Lawrence Kushner's newest book, Kabbalah: A Love Story, are similarly poised between expertise and humility. In their own fields, they're experts in the mysteries of the universe, but they are haunted by the realization that it's possible to know everything about a subject without truly understanding its nature.
Kushner's hero, Kalman Stern, is a scholar of Jewish mysticism. As the book begins, Kalman's very old, tattered copy of the Zohar (the master text of the kabbalah), which he has previously considered merely a “pedagogic prop, a teaching aid for his courses on mysticism,” yields a genuine secret. The back cover, long bereft of its leather, becomes unglued, “giving birth to a new page.”
Sealed between the boards is a mysterious letter written in Aramaic like the Zohar and signed by the Zohar's 13th-century author. The letter uses the metaphor of “the spark” and “the dark womb” - a famous kabbalistic metaphor for creation - to describe the relationship between the letter's writer and its recipient. “It's some kind of a love letter. No, no, it's theology Š some kind of kabbalah Š maybe,” Kalman sputters when he first reads it.
Kalman is at a turning point, a midlife crisis if you like, where he can no longer avoid the conundrums that years of study haven't solved. “I want to know the truth,” Kalman says to himself. “I don't want some secret number code or a weird kabbalistic diagram. I am 46 years old, and I want to know why I am alive Š I want some kind of sign ... And I'd like to have a mystical experience just once before I die Š”
It seems to be a very good sign when Kalman meets Isabel Benveniste (meaning “good vision”), an astronomy researcher whose statements about the cosmos, to Kalman's ears, have the profundity and wisdom of the kabbalah.
To Isabel's ears, Kalman's explanations of mysticism and theology sound heroic, even romantic; she marvels at his ability to “trust the universe.” As they get to know one another, they each share and revisit past experiences, surprised to find themselves discovering new meaning in signs they'd each thought they completely understood.
Despite their obvious compatibility, their relationship comes to a premature halt. Similarly, although the letter Kalman found has drawn him on a tantalizing search for scholarly meaning, it, too, ends with questions Kalman can't answer and that perhaps no one can.
Kabbalah: A Love Story begins with comedian George Carlin's definition of time: “Time is just God's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.” In an elegant twist that mirrors the novel's kabbalistic themes of the connectedness of all things despite the limits of human vision, the answers to Kalman's questions often occur during disruptions in the narrative flow.
For example, the scene in which Kalman acquires the tattered Zohar in Israel years earlier is repeated several times in the novel. In each iteration, Kalman recalls the event differently, assigning it more or less or simply different significance.
Kalman's problem is that signs - even the neon ones over Times Square - are not the static vessels of meaning Kalman wishes them to be. They're always open to reinterpretation.
As the old man who has given the book to Kalman years before explains, “No one is given a sign - not Moses at the bush, not the Israelites at the Red Sea. The natural order does not change, ever. The only things that do change are your own eyes: You see in a new way.”
With the word “kabbalah” in the title, Kushner's book might be mistaken for one of those tedious novels of ideas in which heavy-handed philosophy overwhelms the flimsy cardboard characters.
Kabbalah: A Love Story, however, is more than a collection of interesting ideas; it is fiction enjoyable on all levels. The characters are smart but humble, their self-examination leavened with wry humor. The language is finely crafted, particularly where mystical ideas are rendered pleasurably and poetically lucid. The dialogue between Kalman and his friends - particularly his devil's advocate, Milton - is full of warmth and humor.
Kabbalah: A Love Story is a deceptively quiet novel - but by no means a boring one. Underneath its still surface, persistent ripples and eddies nudge the reader into deeper waters.
Kushner speaks Mon., Nov. 13, at 7:30 at Fairmount Temple. Free. Reservations required.
lhanft@cjn.org
Kabbalah: A Love Story. By Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. Morgan Road Books. New York. 2006. 196 pp. $17.95.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, the well-respected thinker, writer and teacher, is the author of more than a dozen books about Jewish mysticism. However he is sometimes confused with Conservative rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-selling When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
“It happens all the time,” Lawrence Kushner admitted in a 1999 interview. “After a lecture, somebody will come up to me and say, ‘Rabbi Kushner, your books have changed my life.' Then they produce a copy of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Š It keeps me humble.”
The main characters in Lawrence Kushner's newest book, Kabbalah: A Love Story, are similarly poised between expertise and humility. In their own fields, they're experts in the mysteries of the universe, but they are haunted by the realization that it's possible to know everything about a subject without truly understanding its nature.
Kushner's hero, Kalman Stern, is a scholar of Jewish mysticism. As the book begins, Kalman's very old, tattered copy of the Zohar (the master text of the kabbalah), which he has previously considered merely a “pedagogic prop, a teaching aid for his courses on mysticism,” yields a genuine secret. The back cover, long bereft of its leather, becomes unglued, “giving birth to a new page.”
Sealed between the boards is a mysterious letter written in Aramaic like the Zohar and signed by the Zohar's 13th-century author. The letter uses the metaphor of “the spark” and “the dark womb” - a famous kabbalistic metaphor for creation - to describe the relationship between the letter's writer and its recipient. “It's some kind of a love letter. No, no, it's theology Š some kind of kabbalah Š maybe,” Kalman sputters when he first reads it.
Kalman is at a turning point, a midlife crisis if you like, where he can no longer avoid the conundrums that years of study haven't solved. “I want to know the truth,” Kalman says to himself. “I don't want some secret number code or a weird kabbalistic diagram. I am 46 years old, and I want to know why I am alive Š I want some kind of sign ... And I'd like to have a mystical experience just once before I die Š”
It seems to be a very good sign when Kalman meets Isabel Benveniste (meaning “good vision”), an astronomy researcher whose statements about the cosmos, to Kalman's ears, have the profundity and wisdom of the kabbalah.
To Isabel's ears, Kalman's explanations of mysticism and theology sound heroic, even romantic; she marvels at his ability to “trust the universe.” As they get to know one another, they each share and revisit past experiences, surprised to find themselves discovering new meaning in signs they'd each thought they completely understood.
Despite their obvious compatibility, their relationship comes to a premature halt. Similarly, although the letter Kalman found has drawn him on a tantalizing search for scholarly meaning, it, too, ends with questions Kalman can't answer and that perhaps no one can.
Kabbalah: A Love Story begins with comedian George Carlin's definition of time: “Time is just God's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.” In an elegant twist that mirrors the novel's kabbalistic themes of the connectedness of all things despite the limits of human vision, the answers to Kalman's questions often occur during disruptions in the narrative flow.
For example, the scene in which Kalman acquires the tattered Zohar in Israel years earlier is repeated several times in the novel. In each iteration, Kalman recalls the event differently, assigning it more or less or simply different significance.
Kalman's problem is that signs - even the neon ones over Times Square - are not the static vessels of meaning Kalman wishes them to be. They're always open to reinterpretation.
As the old man who has given the book to Kalman years before explains, “No one is given a sign - not Moses at the bush, not the Israelites at the Red Sea. The natural order does not change, ever. The only things that do change are your own eyes: You see in a new way.”
With the word “kabbalah” in the title, Kushner's book might be mistaken for one of those tedious novels of ideas in which heavy-handed philosophy overwhelms the flimsy cardboard characters.
Kabbalah: A Love Story, however, is more than a collection of interesting ideas; it is fiction enjoyable on all levels. The characters are smart but humble, their self-examination leavened with wry humor. The language is finely crafted, particularly where mystical ideas are rendered pleasurably and poetically lucid. The dialogue between Kalman and his friends - particularly his devil's advocate, Milton - is full of warmth and humor.
Kabbalah: A Love Story is a deceptively quiet novel - but by no means a boring one. Underneath its still surface, persistent ripples and eddies nudge the reader into deeper waters.
Kushner speaks Mon., Nov. 13, at 7:30 at Fairmount Temple. Free. Reservations required.
lhanft@cjn.org
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