Seeking Redemption in an Unredeemed World: Essays in Jewish Spirituality

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Rava said: When assessing one’s life…the Heavenly Tribunal will ask… did you glimpse redemption?
The Jewish view of history rests on three pillars: Creation, Revelation and Redemption. Arguably Redemption stands pre-eminent among the three. Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, asserts that the revealed Torah is one continuous name of God. That same Torah, however, bids us to remember Redemption, initiated by the Exodus, “all the days of your life” … encompassing both “This World” and “The World to Come”.

The Hebrew words for Redemption include Yeshu•ah , Hatzalah , Pidyon and Ge•ulah . Interestingly, all are abstracted from human activity and applied only metaphorically to God. Rather than defining redemption as deliverance from history and the human condition, Judaism seems to emphasize redemption within history, even when those redemptions are partial and fleeting.

The essays in this volume offer diverse glimpses of how redemption might break through the fissures of our all-too- fractured world. Spanning theology, lituy, spiritual guidance and practice, dreamwork, the arts, sociology and even politics, they open multiple doors through which the spirit of redemption may be glimpsed, welcomed and pursued

Howard Avruhm Addison, PhD is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Jewish Spirituality at the Graduate Theological Foundation and directs its Doctor of Ministry Program in Jewish Spirituality. Ordained as a rabbi in 1978, he serves as Associate Professor for Instruction at Temple University. Avruhm is the author of The Ennegram and Kabbalah: Reading Your Soul; Show Me Your Way; The Complete Guide to Exploring Interfaith Spiritual Direction; Cast in God's Image and is the co-editor of Jewish Spiritual Direction.