Thirteen Petalled Rose: A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence And Belief by Adin Steinsaltz (2006, Paperback, Expanded)

For more than twenty-five years, modern readers seeking answers to ancient questions about the nature of their existence in God’s universe have turned to The Thirteen Petalled Rose. This new and expanded edition of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s contemporary classic, which includes two additional chapters, seeks to bring the fundamental notions of Kabbalah to an ever-growing audience of spiritual seekers.

The title of the book comes from the symbolic image used to represent the People of Israel in the opening lines of the mystical Jewish text known as the Zohar. In The Thirteen Petalled Rose (perhaps Rabbi Steinsaltz’s most famous work), he seeks to open new vistas for understanding the man-God relationship and how moral human beings should conduct their lives.

The Thirteen Petalled Rose addresses profound topics like good and evil, Divine revelation, the human soul, holiness, ethical ways of life, the Torah and its commandments, the search for the self, and the nature of spiritual worlds and their relationship to the physical. The expanded edition (Basic Books, 2006) also features a new preface by the author, as well as new chapters on the Kabbalistic view of prayer and devotion and an analysis of Elijah the Prophet’s Introduction to the Zohar.

Rabbi Steinsaltz’s vast knowledge of science, psychology, mysticism, and philosophy come together in The Thirteen Petalled Rose as he translates the ancient concepts of Kabbalah into an intelligible language for a new generation of readers.

Jewish prayer is an “I-you” relationship with God. Nothing can be simpler. Nothing can be more difficult. “If I’m going to talk with God, this kind of talk begins with the basic notion of saying: ‘Hello, I’m here to ask something of you,’ or ‘I just want to say thank you.’ These things – and many more – are part of what prayer is,” Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz says.
“Public prayer is more formal prayer,” the rabbi says. “It has a formula in which you express those notions that you have in your heart, not in a spontaneous way, but through a structure. Informal prayer is essentially private. It is spontaneous: one wants to say what one thinks, especially in times of war, famine, illness, [where one] is unprepared to say what one wants to say.”
“In prayer, one thing is important: the point of personal involvement. I can study – and that’s a matter of intelligence – so I can say I understand [a prayer text] better. But when it comes to involvement, it’s a matter of personal connection. Sometimes, my wrestling is not with the meaning of the words but where do I stand vis-à-vis the text. So, I have to find, inside myself, those things I can have a connection with. Yesterday, I was basically aligned with a text. But today, I don’t feel it. People are very changeable. Every day, we are different. So, prayer becomes very different on a daily basis or even three times a day. Because of the changes in me, those things that sometimes, in the morning, make sense or are an expression of what I feel, need to be revived or they may not connect in the afternoon.

“That’s wrestling with prayer. If I am not open in the moment I pray, I am just repeating words. It’s the same thing if you have a phone conversation with someone you love and finish by saying ‘I love you.’ If it is a girl you are engaged to, [the ‘I love you’] may be a strong emotion. Twenty years into a relationship, it carries a different impact.

Highly recommended. See my other reviews of this author's works and vote!