A Teacher
Aryeh Kaplan
Recovering Kabbalah as a practical manual for meditation
The transmission
Aryeh Moshe Eliyahu Kaplan (1934-1983), born Leonard Martin Kaplan in the Bronx, New York, was an American Orthodox rabbi, author, and translator who became one of the most influential 20th-century expositors of Kabbalah and Jewish meditation for an English-reading audience.
Trained both as a rabbi and (earlier) as a physicist, he brought unusual analytic clarity to esoteric texts, and his prolific writing - introductory pamphlets, translations, and original studies - is widely credited as a major factor in the growth of the baal teshuva movement, the return of secular Jews to observance.
His most consequential mystical work was the translation, annotation, and interpretation of classic texts: Sefer Yetzirah (“The Book of Creation”), the Bahir, and Derekh Hashem, alongside original books such as Jewish Meditation and Meditation and Kabbalah.
He argued that, properly understood, Sefer Yetzirah was not abstract cosmology but a practical instruction manual for a specific kind of meditation. He died in 1983 at the age of 48. As a modern scholar-practitioner rather than an originating source.
What they gave
Kabbalah as practice, not just theory: Kaplan’s central move was to read the classical texts as operative manuals - methods for altering consciousness - reframing Kabbalah as a discipline of mind rather than only a theology.
- Recovering letter-and-name meditation: He reconstructed and explained meditative techniques built on the Hebrew letters and divine names (drawing heavily on Abulafia and Sefer Yetzirah), making a centuries-old contemplative technology legible to modern readers.
- The creative power of language: His exposition of Sefer Yetzirah foregrounds the idea that the world is structured through letters and speech - a vivid statement that the cosmos is built from something mind-like and that contemplative work engages reality at that level.
- Bridging tradition and the modern reader: By writing with clarity and restraint, he opened Jewish meditative practice to a wide contemporary audience without severing it from its sources.
In their words
The human mind is not a domesticated animal, but rather seems to have a mind of its own beyond the will of the thinker.
One of the most powerful benefits of meditation is control over the unconscious mind. One learns to use the conscious mind to control mental processes that are usually under the control of the unconscious.
The greater the portion of the mind focused on an experience, the more the experience will be enhanced.
Generally we see ourselves only through a thick veil of ego. For this reason, it is impossible to see ourselves as others see us.
Love for God follows as a natural consequence to the experience of His essence and unity.
You may find yourself pondering not only the meaning of your own life, but the very meaning of existence in general.
Where you are is not as important as where you are heading. If you are willing to devote your life to continued growth, there are virtually no limits to the levels you can reach.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir; the ecstatic, letter-permutation Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia; and the broader classical Jewish meditative tradition he labored to recover.
- Influenced: the baal teshuva movement; the modern practice and study of Jewish meditation; and the many Western readers who encountered practical Kabbalah and Jewish contemplative method first through his books.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Meditation and Kabbalah1982
- Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation1990