Judaism for the World is the work of a master

This collection of essays is written by a master of religious life. That mastery includes both learning and living, and this volume gives equal weight to both the scholarship and the being of its author. Arthur Green is a rabbi, religious scholar, and Jew. The founding dean and current rector of the rabbinical program at Hebrew College, he has also taught at Brandeis University and served as an administrator at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Green was one of the founding members of Havurat Shalom, a group devoted to communal Jewish religious life that started in 1968. In many ways, Havurat Shalom and its ethos set the tone for the rest of his life and career, with its combination of rich communal life and personal exploration of Jewish texts through scholarship. This book is dedicated to that group’s members “in enduring friendship.” It shows not only how to lead a holy and religious life but also how to create a system of education that ensures that others are similarly devoted and catalyzed.

Typical of Green’s approach is an essay called “Scholarship Is Not Enough.” Here he notes that the younger generation of scholars of mysticism have a “desire not only to understand and analyze the profound thought of the Zohar, but to touch the sublime through their own involvement with it.” This is a veering away from the approach of an earlier generation that kept the claims of the text separate from the lived experiences of scholars.